


To Perform the Reparation

by Esteliel



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Boot Worship, Facials, First Time, Humiliation, Identity Issues, Javert's conflicted indulging of them, Kneeling, M/M, Madeleine Era, Paris Era, Post-Seine, Power Play, Religious Guilt, Unhealthy Relationships, Valjean's conflicted submissive tendencies, Valjean's penchant for deprivation, blow jobs through pants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:02:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4483874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Javert's nostrils flare. His lips are narrow and cruel, and Valjean thinks with sudden longing of the sharps fangs and strong jaws of a wolf – or the piercing claws of a cat that finally tires of playing with the mouse, and ends its life with nonchalance.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>Javert will not do such a thing. Javert would not. But there are other ways Javert can put an end to the torment that is this never-ending darkness in Valjean, now that the sun of his life has set. And is the night not the realm of the wolf? It does not seem so strange to close his eyes and abandon himself to sharp claws and fangs.</i>
</p><p>From Montreuil-sur-Mer to Petit-Picpus to Paris, Valjean seeks to make reparation. Javert lets him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Montreuil-sur-Mer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NotAnymore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAnymore/gifts).



> Thank you so much to vaincs for all the help and suggestions! <3

# 1.

Earlier that day, it had been raining. There are still puddles and muddy grooves to see in the streets of Montreuil, and although Javert took care to avoid them, he is nevertheless not as neat as he prefers to be when he enters the mayor's office. Madeleine barely looks up – and that is suspicious too, Javert thinks darkly, surveying the room from behind the collar of his greatcoat.

He knows the man to be overly polite. Does he not waste hours walking the streets and touching the grubby heads of gamins, handing out coin and trinkets and toys to every undeserving creature beneath the sky? And when the law enters his office, the mayor can barely lift his head to meet Javert’s eyes. When before him stands a man who can pride himself on the fact that he is a useful part of that system of law and justice that keeps a town such as Montreuil clean and free of crime, Madeleine instead uses every chance he has to flee Javert's presence.

Is that not strange? Is that not very nearly suspicious?

Javert sits when he is bid. He continues to watch as the man's head bows a little deeper over his letters. His shoulders are broad. The sight makes some instinct within Javert tighten, and as he sits and watches and waits, his eyes never waver from that bent neck, as quiet and still as the cat in wait before the hole.

The mouse will come, he thinks. In the end, the mouse will always come. It is in their nature – curiosity, perhaps. Greed. That fundamental disregard for the rules that govern society. The mouse, lacking that understanding and the foresight of those who watch its hideaway, will come scurrying out, and quick as lightning, the paw will lower, and the mouse will be pinned in place by claws as unforgiving as iron.

That is how it goes. And so he tells himself as he waits and watches that even in this, he is doing his work. He is watchful. He does not forgive. Some obscene fate has set this man above him, but Javert is vigilant and ever poised for the moment when he will reach out and grab him by the lapels and know that moment of ecstasy as the world is righted once more: justice restored, the mouse pinned, the false title ripped from the hands of the impostor, that broad neck bent in supplication.

That is the way it should be, and that is the way it will be. All Javert need do is remain patient.

When the man finishes at last and looks up, Javert is still watching. He makes no attempt to hide it. Who but a guilty man would have need to quail, after all? On the neck of a righteous man, certainly Javert's gaze can have no weight.

It is a trifling matter that has called him here. He avoids the mayor's presence most weeks. There is something in Madeleine's presence that unsettles him, a whiff of something his nose fails to catch and which his mind tells him is the reek of the bagne.

He clenches his jaw impatiently. For a moment, he wonders if his face has given away his distaste, for now Madeleine falters, and he thinks he sees a flush on his cheeks and that scuttling away of the gaze that is ever the mark of the criminal.

And still, the man is not yet caught. What a quandary, to catch the stink of the bagne in his nose whenever Madeleine walks past, and yet to have to bow and scurry and pretend that the rank filth he can see dripping from those limbs are a fine perfume!

But soon enough all of that will be stripped off, and then–

"Do you not agree, Javert?"

"Pardon?" Javert's nostrils flare. Madeleine has come to a stop in front of him, and that, Javert realizes, is unusual enough that it makes him halt in his train of thought. He realizes belatedly that he has not listened to his ramblings; but one way or another, the charity this man hands out like the devil dealing out temptation does not concern him.

"I am certain you will come to a decision, monsieur," he says, his lips twisted with barely veiled mockery. "Were you sincere in asking my opinion."

"But I am sincere, Javert."

It is true, Madeleine is still flushed, and he has not moved away from his spot in front of Javert. Again his nostrils flare. Is that not the sweat and the salt of Toulon? Is that not the flush of the guilty?

"If you are sincere you will know that I do not care about your projects. Would you feed every thief, every woman of the street that came to our town? What a fine plan that is! Soon we would be overrun; soon they would no longer say: 'Here is Montreuil; here is our fine factory,' they would say instead: 'Here is Montreuil, where the criminals rule, where every thief is served a good stew and every woman of the town is given a fine dress and called _madame_ ', and–"

"Enough, Javert." Madeleine is still flushed, and this time, Javert cannot help but feel a contemptuous pleasure at the way the man's eyes shy away from him at his words. Very good. Nothing of use will come from the poison of such charity.

"Such public charity is, of course, a different thing for a man in your position," Javert says. Again his jaw clenches, his bones aching at what he _knows_ has to be false, a pretense – can he not smell it on him, the stink of fear? Is that not the sheen of sweat on his brow?

"You misjudge me," Madeleine says after a moment, visibly taken aback, and Javert feels a fierce pride in having managed to unsettle him so before he sharply reins himself in. It does not do to provoke the man openly. He wears the mayor's chain. Half the town belongs to him by now.

“It is easy to be merciful, monsieur, when one does not have to walk through the mire of crime every day.”

It is hard to hold back the heat that threatens to erupt from that place within him that watches every reaction of Madeleine, forever waiting for that one sign that will give away the guilt, the lifetime of misdeeds, the foulness hiding beneath the fine cravat and waistcoat.

Soon enough, Javert tells himself, watching with a deep pleasure how the flush spreads over Madeleine's face, certain to color his throat as well, there beneath the cravat. And soon enough that finery will be gone, and he will wear chains of iron instead, and...

"What are you doing." It comes out almost as a bark.

Slowly, Madeleine is moving to his knees in front of him. For a moment, Javert refuses to believe what his eyes tell him. Something about the sight makes him want to recoil in disgust and horror. 

Madeleine does not speak as he sinks down, the motion slow but certain. Again the suspicion nestled within Javert’s heart raises its head. What devilry is this, it asks as he watches his knees fold. What twisted plan makes Madeleine lower himself? Is that not the look of a man surrendering himself?

Then, Madeleine rests on both knees before him, and for a long moment, all thought is gone. There is only that bright ecstasy of having been right, of triumphing at last, of that wretch on his knees and soon enough in chains! Then, unpleasant reality returns like a sliver of cold ice driven into his heart, and he wants to grab his shoulders and shake him until he ceases to infuriate so, until he ceases to upset the natural order of things. A mayor on his knees before the inspector! Who has ever heard of such a thing, he wants to ask – but finds he cannot when he looks down at him. Something is stirring within his own guts at how Madeleine has to visibly force himself to hold his gaze.

There. The man's tongue comes out to lick his lips, and suddenly Javert wants to groan at how tight his skin feels at the unsettling sight. Javert is taut, poised – for flight, perhaps. For attack, certainly. Has he not told himself that sooner or later, this man will be pinned by his own hand?

And yet, now the mayor's trembling hands reach out for him, and Javert watches in disbelief how those ink-stained fingers come to rest lightly against the leather shaft of his boots. The leather is dirty, he notices again, distracted by how Madeleine once more wets his lips. The boots are speckled by fine spots of dried mud. Well then. Who is this man to chide Javert for such a thing when he would feed and clothes thieves and whores?

"Charity is not – position has nothing to do with it," Madeleine says at last, and Javert has to swallow incredulous laughter. "Did not Christ himself wash the feet of the apostles?"

"And am I a disciple? Or would _you_ not rather think me – a sinner?" Javert asks, calculating, although he cannot even say what he expects the answer will be. Regardless, there is a strange heat in him, suffusing his limbs – the certainty, the delight of the impending capture, he thinks again, even as he looks down onto Madeleine’s locks, noting the way the light gleams on where it is starting to gray. His cheeks are shaven, impeccably clean, but Madeleine is so close that Javert can see the shadow of new growth beneath the skin, and the sheen of perspiration. A hunger is roused within him at the sight. It would be so easy to reach out, quick as the striking snake, wrap his hand around that throat, hold that man Madeleine in this position before him, on his knees, feel the shock of fear strike through him at last...

Madeleine's fingers brush his boots again. This time, the man does not meet his eyes as Javert watches. His face is downcast, eyeing the shaft of Javert's boot, and now he pulls out a handkerchief, as tentative as though he were faced with a feral dog. It is a square of simple linen, pure white, and Javert wants to grimace with distaste as he spies the embroidered initials.

Something about this man rouses his instincts like no other ever has. Javert, who has been in the habit of trusting these finely honed senses for long years now, sniffing out the stink of fear of those who hide in respectable company, cannot help but tense in his chair. His fingers ache with the need to reach out and grip his prey, to wring that admission of guilt from him; any moment now, any second the man will give himself away, speak a wrong word, reveal–

The white, pristine cloth rubs against one of the specks of dirt on his boot.

"Stop this," Javert orders in irritation. There is a darkness in him looming up – the hunger has been roused within him, and now it pulsates with sensual greed somewhere deep below his chest, whispering to him of how soon, soon, he will thrust his hands into that finely coiffed hair and pull back that head and see the guilt and the fear in those eyes...

"You walked through the rain," Madeleine says slowly, and Javert takes note with new delight of how hesitantly he speaks the words, of how he still does not dare to raise his head.

"It stopped raining earlier. It is of no importance. Let it be, monsieur," Javert says, and if he is curt with him, than that is what a man deserves who seeks to drive him to the limits of what can be politely borne.

Again the cloth is rubbed against the leather, wiping away another small stain. Javert clenches his jaw. He can feel sweat on his own brow. What is that devilish man doing?

"What is the meaning of this?" he demands at last, pressed against the back of his chair now, unwilling to let this farce continue. There is something very wrong in this tableau. The magistrate should not be on his knees before the subordinate, Javert tells himself, and then he thinks of how this man, who seems to find such distasteful delight in upsetting the natural order of things, might be doing this for no other reason than to upset Javert.

The hunger is still there, a twisting, morphing beast that bids him to reach out and pull Madeleine's face close and stare into his eyes until the man will submit at last and reveal the blackness that must be at the depth of his own heart. Javert knows it too well to be wrong in this.

"I do not know," Madeleine admits after a moment. His voice is very soft, his head still bent, and Javert draws in a sudden breath at the unexpected admission.

He is tense. Something within Javert has snapped to attention. He thought it was that one heartbeat before the animal goes for the jugular – but instead he remains still, listening to the sound of Madeleine breathing, staring down at that hated head bowed before him. The hunger to see this man humbled and revealed for who he is swirls within him, faster and faster, until Javert is dizzy, until this maelstrom within him churns, the waters rising. Then he becomes aware of it: this beast within him, the hunger for the hunt, is now pulsing between his legs, hot and sharp and damning. It stretches his trousers; his flesh is thickening with it, and Madeleine is still breathing carefully, not looking up. As shock and shame rushes through him at the realization, he wonders if Madeleine knows.

Madeleine is still looking down. Javert can see where the curls of his hair brush against the collar of his coat. Madeleine's hands rest on his boot; Javert can feel the gentle pressure of those incongruously worn hands rubbing at another stain, and all he can think of as his prick throbs obscenely against the stretched cloth of his trousers is the need to put his foot onto that bent neck, pushing the man down onto the ground, where he belongs.

Javert does not make a sound. His face is hot, burning – then Madeleine moves on to his other boot, and Javert's legs spread instinctively, his swollen prick pushing forward more forcefully. The bulge is obvious and obscene; everything is lost to that rush of heat through his limbs as Madeleine kneels between his spread legs, his head so close to Javert's hard prick that Madeleine has to be aware of it. Still his head remains bowed, a picture of perfect servility, if it were not for the soft sounds of his shuddering breath that Javert can hear.

Madeleine's hands are still at work. Javert imagines them curved around the shaft of his boot: those rough workman's hands so careful and gentle with the cloth, the fine handkerchief wiping away smudges, the parched white stained by the dirt of the street.

Javert's teeth clench as another jolt of heat strikes between his legs at that thought. Something about the image is obscene. Once more the world is upside down. A magistrate should not kneel before the subordinate. A gentleman should not use his clean handkerchief to polish the boots of a police spy. It seems to Javert that Madeleine must take a perverse delight in upsetting order, and he lingers on that thought just as his eyes linger on where curls of fine, dark hair tease against the mayor's collar.

Heat is bubbling up in Javert as he listens to the man's careful breathing. His heart throbs in time with the pulse between his legs.

Has Madeleine done this to trap him? Javert’s breath is shortening, and then – when that neck bends a little more, that pride humbled before him, that man who delights in thwarting rules and conventions finally bowing before the law – then he hears the soft sound that escapes Madeleine as he exhales. It is a small, rough, stricken thing. The hands on his boots stroke lightly up and down, and the lust within Javert is devouring fire. To reach down, to grip that man by the hair, to _force_ him to bend: it is a delightful tableau in his mind, roaring in his blood. The pulse of his blood is harsh with that seductive dictate to return order to the world, to demand, to take, to force this man who cannot seem to tell wrong from right to his knees, and then–

Javert's thoughts break off, even as his prick pushes with new need against his trousers, roused by the horror Javert's mind has conjured even as Javert himself recoils in revulsion from the idea of such revolution.

He, a mere police spy, to lay hands on a magistrate, to think thoughts of such perversion, to–

Madeleine's breath shudders as he exhales, and Javert's heart convulses as before him, this man whom he has dreamed of seeing humiliated and revealed now leans forward, inexorably pulled by some invisible, cruel hand until his lips are pressed to the shaft of Javert's boot. It does not last for more than a heartbeat: the kiss is short and sweet, and when Madeleine draws back, Javert thinks he can make out a flush on his cheeks.

Something within Javert has shifted, as if a sword has come down: a sharp blade to part the curtain of roaring fire within him like the sea. In that short moment, clarity hits like lightning, knowledge blindingly bright, and he cannot breathe as a terrible joy fills him, throbbing in time with the ache between his legs. His senses have not betrayed him, even though that first suspicion was wrong. But his instincts are true: something about the man has always been false, and here is the mayor's secret uncovered at last, vulnerable and bare in his hands, that vulgar little secret.

Javert cannot breathe; he still cannot move, even though his prick aches insistently against the tight fit of his trousers, and the soft hair of Madeleine, that head bent low, makes his fingers clench with a need that is entirely new to him, and yet no longer quite as horrifying. 

This, this is the root of the entire distasteful thing. It was never the stink of the bagne: it was this dark secret at the heart of this man, the rottenness at the core that Javert has sensed all along. Has he not seen these foul displays enough to know such a thing when it is unveiled at last before him? The rutting beasts in Toulon, the men baring themselves to others in parks and urinals in Paris?

And this, _this_ –

He bites back a sound of triumph that sits heavy and sweet in his throat, although he can taste it on his tongue, the victory that is sharp as lightning. The man is still kneeling. Javert can hear the changed rhythm of his breathing, the heaviness of whatever obscene urges have taken him. Were he to push him back now, forcing him to straighten, Javert is certain he would see between Madeleine's legs the vulgar shame that has driven him to such debasement.

The need to reach out, to wrest that final proof from the man, to force him to acknowledge it and know himself revealed to Javert at last is nearly impossible to resist – but Javert does resist, and forces himself to breathe deeply until after a moment, Madeleine puts away his now stained handkerchief, fingers trembling.

Javert's legs are still spread. Between them, he is hard with blood that throbs with a fierce delight at being proven right. But it is best to be patient still, he tells himself, watching, gloating, as Madeleine rises at last, his face flushed. And there, between his own legs, Javert can see the mark of Madeleine's shame, the flesh that has been roused by such debasement.

Javert breathes calmly. Delight washes through him, and the bright heat of it burns away the lingering doubt and guilt that years of suspicion of this man have left behind.

No more of that uncertainty. Javert watches Madeleine return to his desk – fleeing, he thinks, nearly smiling as he tracks his movements and the way Madeleine cannot quite look at him.

Fleeing. From Javert – or from that rotten, sinful thing that is at the core of him?

This time, it is not so infuriating to have to listen to the mayor’s excuses and futile plans. Let him coddle thieves. Javert will never again have to believe this man's pretensions of goodness now, and the joy within him burns brighter with satisfaction when he sees Madeleine's eyes once skirt past where Javert too is still achingly hard.

No. Madeleine can never again lie to him.

# 2.

In his dream, Madeleine takes to his knees again. In his dream, that broad neck bends, that mouth which forces Javert to endure talk of hospitals, of schools, of the usefulness of weeds when that man who dotes on thieves and whores alike has never with his own hands tried to keep the streets of Montreuil free from the thorny weeds of crime – in his dream, that mouth is silent save for the sound of his breathing, which disturbs the silence with a heaviness that tastes sweet like victory to Javert.

The lines between dream and reality blur: it is no longer fantasy to see that man bend his head and take to his knees. But where before Javert had furiously tried to see in him that image of the brutes of Toulon, he now waits with bated breath for the sin in the fine magistrate to spill forth, excitement pricking his skin when Madeleine polishes his boots with his own handkerchief, those fingers that sign letters now trembling as they press lightly against the shaft of his boot.

There is no dirt on his boots today: the leather is spotless, and still Madeleine kneels, holding himself very still, head bent as though in prayer, although Javert burns with the pleasurable awareness that this man's worship is of a different nature.

Madeleine can talk of Christ all he wants. The delight within Javert grows and grows even as his fingers itch to reach out and grab those fine curls and make the man look up at him, to see in his eyes the awareness that he knows, and that he knows that Javert knows–

But instead, Javert's hands reach down, and in his dream, his fingers do not tremble. They are swift and certain, dealing with this as he deals with all other things: his trousers gape open, his prick pushes forth, hard and eager, and his hand reaches out to wrap around the mayor's neck. Madeleine does not resist; he does not make a sound as Javert pulls him forward and holds him in place, but that mouth – that mouth opens obediently even as his cheeks flush, as Javert watches his prick slide into Madeleine’s mouth, those lips stretching wide around him–

Pleasure wrecks him, harsh like a blow to his gut, and he shudders helplessly in his sheets, one hand down between his legs to rub himself through the pleasure even as he gasps for air, fully awake even before he has ceased spilling himself.

For a few shameful heartbeats, hot guilt rushes through him. Then the shame recedes as he thinks of Madeleine sinking to his knees once more, that mouth pressed to the leather of his boots, of that man silent, bowed, lowering himself in such a way – searching out his own debasement like a beggar sifting through filth.

It is not he who needs to feel shame, Javert thinks, and his prick aches anew at that memory.

# 3.

It is quiet in Madeleine's office. It is early; there is yet none of the noise that will fill the streets in two hours, when carts will roll away from the market. There had been a light drizzle yesterday, but today dawned with impeccably blue skies and the sun shining down on dew-laden leaves.

Here, in this room, nothing of the outside world intrudes. For this one quiet moment, neither markets nor office nor even the letters on the mayor's desk exist. The air in the small room is heavy with the silence; every breath Madeleine takes rakes down Javert's back, makes this thing within him take note: the keen senses that have worked tirelessly to see so many criminals brought to justice have discovered a new delight in seeing this man exposed in the full weight of his shame. And now that his eyes are no longer forced to search for traitorous marks, they freely linger on the man's flushed skin instead, the stretched fabric at his groin where his trousers can barely conceal the proof of his degeneracy, the mouth that he has seen in his dreams, craving an even worse debasement than what this man had already willingly offered before.

Madeleine has not spoken. The scene is familiar to Javert by now; this is something Madeleine has wordlessly offered again and again until it has developed a life of its own. Every week, when Javert enters the mayor’s office, the same ritual will invariably take place. And if at first Javert had thought it a ploy – the man flaunting his prideful humility – time has erased much of the instinctive disgust he had at first felt to see a magistrate humble himself so despite his rightful place. 

Awareness has taken the place of disgust; in Javert's breast, that hunter's heart is beating faster. As the dog points forward to alert its master of game, so Javert's instincts are finely honed to this man's secrets now. His nose knows the stench of them. Although it is perhaps not something that should please him quite as much, for there is no crime to be found in a man kneeling before another, something within him still throbs with aching joy to see that mask fall every time Madeleine goes to his knees.

Hands slide gently over his boots, polishing the leather with care. Madeleine, Javert has to admit, is good at this task. Even now, to an observer it might simply seem this: the mayor, the good man, the philanthropist proves his humbleness and goodness all over as he kneels before an officer of the police, the magistrate's hands polishing the leather with the same calm focus this man devotes to his letters and ledgers.

But it is not so. Javert knows. Javert carries the weapon of his awareness within him, that sharp blade, and watches it slice through the veil of goodness now. He feels the rush of pleased heat at what is revealed beneath, the mayor in all his flawed nakedness: the slightest hitch in his breath when Madeleine is forced to lean forward a little, the way his breathing is just a little too loud in the quiet of the room.

His head is bent, and Javert wonders once more what would happen should he bury his fingers in that graying hair and pull his head up. Would Madeleine protest? Hardly so. What he would see would be flushed cheeks, eyes dark with some unholy gratification at such debasing service, his mouth parting for a soft, helpless gasp as Javert would make him meet his eyes and force him at last to face the depravity that is the true, concealed heart of him...

Madeleine hesitates for a long moment. He is finished – or he should be. The entire revolting ritual is too familiar by now.

Whatever it is that makes Madeleine kneel before him so readily and stroke the leather of his boots with a careful, light touch that even now rouses revulsion and a queasy heat in Javert has not yet left. Javert can taste it in the air of the office: the heavy, cloying smell of defeat and fear and a touch of breathless recklessness.

Madeleine's, he thinks, and only then realizes that his fingers are no longer clenched, that his hands have made their way down to where he is pressing uncomfortably against his trousers once more, his prick full and hard at the distasteful display. Madeleine has not moved. Those hands are still clasped lightly around the shaft of his boot as if in prayer, that head is bowed, and again Javert cannot help but remember that mouth opening so willingly in his dream, the obscene, wet gleam of the lips as his prick slid inside. Even now he can hear the heaviness of Madeleine's breathing, despite how quiet the man always is, and Javert knows that between the mayor's legs his sin rests just as heavily.

And how does Javert know that this is real – perhaps _this_ is the dream, and that memory of Madeleine opening for his prick so willingly was not?

For a moment, Javert cannot say. His fingers tremble as he opens the buttons that hold his trousers closed, and the air is thick with what is hanging over them, an expectation so heavy and cloying that Javert is reeling, unsettled at last. It must be a dream, he tells himself as he frees his prick and shivers to feel the cold air of the room on his swollen flesh. It must be the dream – perhaps they are both caught in a nightmare. Perhaps –

His fingers against the sensitive skin are nearly too much to bear. The hot rush of blood within him is painful, and he beats back the rising dread at the touch that feels too _real_.

Reality can have no place here, not in this chamber filled with the reek of secrets and a magistrate's unsavory sins. Then Madeleine looks up, slowly, slowly, and his lips are swollen and dark with blood as though he has bitten them as he waited, and his cheeks are flushed, and his eyes – his eyes –

Javert groans as his cock throbs in his hand and it is too late. He can only stare in shock at that red mouth, those eyes dark with guilt, the sweet, sweet surprise and shame in them as a rope of white splashes across Madeleine's cheek. All Javert can do is groan and clench his hand around himself as the ecstasy of it all races with sharp, lusty pain up from his groin through his spine, and his prick throbs and pulses. Again and again ribbons of white spatter across the mayor's shocked, upturned face until at last he is done, and the room is quiet again save for the thundering of blood in his ears. The man is still looking at him, still on his knees, silent and breathing hard, as though it was not Javert who just found his pleasure in such a shocking way.

It seems like long moments pass. Javert cannot look away. It might have been only the span of a few heartbeats, but time stretches. In the space between every too-loud, sickening _thud_ of his heart, the view burns itself into his memories: white globs of semen gleaming on Madeleine's face, a trail of it slowly dripping down one cheek. Another streak of it has splashed across his other cheek, a drop right there on the man's lip. Javert feels his heart shudder and stop and then start again with a terrifying urgency at the sight.

He cannot look away. He cannot move. But the same seems to be true for Madeleine, who still kneels and looks up at him, eyes wide and shocked. The hare trapped by the snare at last, Javert thinks with instinctive joy, and then has to correct himself, for that is not true, not anymore. Whatever he had once believed about this man, he has been proven wrong long ago.

If the man has been trapped now, then it is in a snare of his own, for there it is, clearly displayed to Javert: the shuddering breath, the flush of his face, the unnatural willingness that makes him still kneel, baring his face – his stained, soiled face – to Javert as if for inspection, refraining even from instinctively wiping at the seed.

Javert feels sick with triumph. A hollow heat burns inside him at having figured this man out at long last. Is it wrong to gloat in such a way at having uncovered a superior's secrets? It most certainly is, Javert has to admit to himself, and then shifts and bites back a sound when his gaze drops lower for a second, and he sees again the hardness that strains between Madeleine's own legs.

Perhaps this fervor in Javert might be forgiven, for Madeleine certainly does not behave as a magistrate should. Too long has Javert been forced to watch him flout the rules. There is a satisfaction now in seeing for himself the proof that at Madeleine's core, there is a rottenness that invalidates the mask of insufferable, false humility this man bears.

"My apologies, monsieur," Javert murmurs at last. He is surprised the words come so easily – his throat is parched, his tongue heavy in his mouth; the words are rough. How strange to apologize for such a thing, to speak the words and watch the fascination in him unfold as slowly, a drop of his seed drips down Madeleine's chin. He wants to groan with sudden hunger at the way it gleams on Madeleine's lip – it is wrong, all of this is wrong. It is he who should kneel and beg for forgiveness and offer himself up to any punishment this man deems appropriate, he thinks, hysteria bubbling up in him at the sight, at the unmistakable proof of how very far he has transgressed.

Javert watches as his hands reach out, his fingers still shaking. He has to bite back another sound of sharp disbelief as Madeleine does not flinch away, as he keeps his face raised – almost obediently. Javert has to swallow a despairing groan at how sweet that word tastes on his tongue.

Madeleine does not move, not even when Javert grasps his face and wipes away a droplet of still-warm come with a careful fingertip, feeling it wet and blood-warm, strangely disgusting against his own skin.

He will clean him, he thinks dimly. He will wipe it all off and apologize again, and maybe they will never speak of it again. Whatever sin has spread its roots through this man's heart, certainly this has to end here. This has to be enough to make anyone see that such a thing cannot be, cannot be encouraged, not even by a man like Javert who has never pretended to hide his dislike of the one who has humbled himself before him time and again in this room.

Here now is his chance to stop this. If he leaves now, maybe Madeleine will understand the sign, and not seek to offer again by kneeling before him.

Instead, Javert watches with disbelieving horror and hunger both how his come-stained fingers slide ever closer to that red mouth, wiping away another wet trail of his issue, and then slide into the mouth that opens breathlessly, obediently at the pressure. Madeleine's eyes are dark and helpless. Javert feels sick, and then he feels the heat and the wetness of Madeleine's mouth, and sees how the man's prick hardens even more in his trousers when Javert's fingers stroke his still-warm release over his tongue.

Madeleine makes no sound, but his eyes are dazed. His lips close warm and soft around Javert's fingers, and when Javert pulls out, they gleam with his spit. He smears that wetness over his cheeks, painting a glistening trail as he wipes away more of his issue, sliding his stained fingers back into that hot mouth as Madeleine's lashes tremble.

Even now, a part of him refuses to believe what he sees. It is not so unfamiliar – Javert has imagined similar scenarios countless times, woken sweaty and tangled in his blankets, throbbingly hard, the sight of Madeleine kneeling burned into his heavy eyelids.

Javert presses in ever so slightly now, feeling the give and the heat of his tongue. Madeleine makes a soft, breathless little sound, a choked gasp that is muffled nearly completely by the fingers that fill his mouth, and Javert watches those red lips stretch around him. He looks into the eyes that are lifted up to him almost beseechingly – as though it were not Madeleine who came to kneel, but Javert who came to command. Javert keeps watching as his hands do the work his mind cannot approve of, even though the traitorous pulse between his legs throbs with sickening joy at how easy it is to do this thing, at how readily Madeleine yields up the use of his mouth, as readily as he has taken to his knees in this perversion of penance.

Something has taken hold of him. Some will other than his own seems to lead his fingers, and it becomes strangely easy to sit here and watch, reality fragmenting into sharp splinters like a church window shattering from a stone: there is a trail of stringy seed. There is a tongue hot and wet against his skin. There is cloth pulled too tightly over a burgeoning hardness; here are eyes that meet his own, pupils dark and wide and shocked.

Javert's heart beats somewhere far away, deep and sluggish, a monster safely shut away in a cave. There is something distasteful about sliding his fingers into that hot mouth. There is something nearly peaceful about it too. Madeleine kneels before him as though it were completely natural, and Javert has to think about him kneeling at mass, has to think about him parting those soft lips to receive the Eucharist, has to think, incongruously, of an animal gently, gratefully taking offered food from a palm...

It is not a dream. He becomes aware of that once more when he leaves, safely tucked into his trousers, Madeleine flushed and quiet behind his desk, eyes averted. Javert carries that new truth as a hidden triumph with him: that beneath that desk, the mayor's flesh is still burning; that on his tongue, he still feels the weight of Javert's fingers and the bitterness of the sin that had made him first fall to his knees.

If Madeleine had intended to prove to Javert the virtue of humility, he has long since lost that battle, if it ever was one. That triumph is sweet, and it manages to overshadow the disgust that still nests within Javert's heart at Madeleine's weakness. He cannot fault a superior, perhaps – he cannot write to Paris and bring forward such revolting things. But he can wield the man's flaws against him as he would wield the cudgel against a thief, and in time, Madeleine will have to admit defeat.

Javert does not allow himself to think of what form such a defeat might take.

# 4.

The sight is familiar. The small room. The desk of heavy wood; the chair abandoned. The man on his knees, and nothing but the sound of his breathing to disturb the silence of whatever it is that is enacted here. It is a form of worship perhaps, Javert wonders? The man kneels so willingly, so silently; Javert cannot say what he is thinking at all. Certainly there must be shame. He has seen it in his eyes, after all, and he has seen the way his cheeks flush while something in him seems to tense and relax at once.

Perhaps it is this which makes unbidden images of worship rise up in Javert. He has watched Madeleine at mass, once or twice, and found on his face a similar shift as he takes the Eucharist with downcast eyes and soft, hungry lips whose sensuality seems to make a mockery of the act.

Javert cannot make sense of him even now that he knows what secrets are hidden at the bottom of his heart. Madeleine is his superior still; Javert cannot question him, cannot accuse, cannot wrap his hand around his throat and pull him close to shake the truth from him in rage.

What is it that makes Madeleine sink to his knees with the transfixed fear of a trapped animal? The hardness between Madeleine’s legs has revealed the base desire that is at the heart of this act; yes, that Javert knows. And yet Madeleine does not speak. He does not move to touch or to demand; he takes to his knees, touching Javert's boots with reverent hands, and bends his head before him as easily as a martyr tasting a final ecstasy of heavenly-willed torment.

Now, once more those hands are polishing the leather of his boots with quiet focus. It is a form of worship, Javert thinks; he can find no other word for it – and yet it is not he who is worshiped here, he is certain of that at least. Perhaps that is the final secret this man is still hiding from him. What makes him fall to his knees with such eagerness; what makes him hold still and blush and hesitantly touch his tongue to Javert's fingers in his mouth, tasting the bitterness of Javert's seed from them in gratitude?

No, he has not yet wrested all of his secrets from Madeleine. Beneath the heat and the helplessness that looks at him from hooded eyes, there is perhaps something even worse, yet another layer of debasement – and how satisfying would it be to peel back layer upon layer, like an onion that looks flawless at the outside, but once cut, reveals a core of moldy flesh.

Madeleine's head is bowed; his hands clasp the shaft of his boot with the devotion of a man praying, and Javert, who has seen the sight often enough that it no longer seems quite as unreal, at last allows his hands to stray, to slowly open the buttons that hold his trousers closed. Already his prick has been straining against the cloth; now, it rests against his thigh, thick and lewd, not fully hard yet, but pulsing there with the greed this man calls forth with his bent head and his reverent hands.

Javert watches. It is enough, for now – Madeleine is focused on his task, and Javert is content to wait, his prick warm and heavy on his thigh, slowly flushing with blood as he watches that bowed head. It should perhaps be strange to be so exposed; but the truth is that sometime during those hours spent in this room, watching a man humble himself who should by all rights demand Javert's humility instead, his body has learned to take such transgression for granted.

The mayor, in any case, will not protest. Javert listens to his breathing, ignoring the urge to rub his own aching flesh, thinking of how much Madeleine has to be aching, too.

When Madeleine at last finishes, Javert acts almost without thinking: one perfectly polished boot slides forward, pressing up against that hot weight there between Madeleine's legs, and at the touch, Madeleine flushes and looks up, his mouth parting for a small, helpless sound of shocked surprise.

Javert watches as new heat spreads across his cheeks, and now, at last, he speaks for the first time.

"Please don't," he says, his voice thick with embarrassment. Javert can read it in his eyes too, can see it in the way he is shaking – does it take effort not to accept the invitation and rub his aching prick against Javert's offered boot? It has to, Javert thinks, and something within him is greedy for that sight: the man being made to rut against the leather, forced to grind his prick against Javert's boot over and over again until his trousers are stained. And then, perhaps, he will flush again and easily submit if Javert grabs his head and pushes it down, and kiss away the stains of his seed from Javert's boots in apology...

Javert swallows. It is all too easy to imagine. He thinks of how the man's breathing would speed up if he were to grab his hair in such a way, even as he acquiesces and moves his foot back. Madeleine shivers and exhales and, as if in gratitude, leans forward to press his lips lightly to Javert's knee.

Javert draws in a sudden breath. Madeleine has kissed the leather of his boot before, but this is different. Through the cloth of his trousers, he can feel the heat of his lips. He remembers the heat as he slid his fingers into his mouth. Javert's prick stiffens even more, every pulse of his heartbeat coming with the impact of lightning, and then, somehow, his fingers are in Madeleine's hair, sliding down to his nape, curving around the shape of his skull to lightly stroke the soft hair.

Madeleine still does not move. Javert's heart beats once, twice – and then he can feel the heat of Madeleine's breath soaking through the fabric, those soft lips mouthing hesitantly at the cloth even as Javert's prick twitches. Lust pulses thick and distasteful between Javert's legs at the sight of Madeleine's mouth there – so close. Javert cannot look away from the sight. A drop of sticky fluid drips from the flushed head of his prick onto his trousers, and he has to bite back a groan as he thinks again of Madeleine's wide-eyed shock when lust erupted from him like an act of violence, his seed spattered over the man's face like a slap.

His prick pulses again with approval at the memory, and Javert swallows another groan while Madeleine still hesitates with his mouth hot and shy against his knee.

Javert wants to bury his hand in his hair and grab him and force him to shed that shyness. He wants to make him rut against his boot and see him flush and come undone and feel the shame he should feel for such vile behavior.

Slowly, tentatively, Madeleine's mouth moves upwards, and Javert watches, aching with the awful need that too often makes his prick thicken and spend at thoughts of Madeleine on his knees. His mouth is so close now. That sinful mouth that opened so willingly to receive his fingers, that hot tongue that quietly, gratefully licked Javert's release from his fingers. It is nearly unbearable to know that these are not nightmares but memories, and at the same time, the cat's sharp delight within Javert is too keen to be ignored, and it gloats now with secret ecstasy at every inch this man's mouth moves upwards, gloats at the lowered eyes and the flushed cheeks and the heavy breathing that fills the room.

Another droplet of clear fluid oozes down onto his trousers, and Javert wants to moan at the obscenity of the sight, for Madeleine's soft mouth is still hesitantly moving closer. Javert strokes his hair again with mocking gentleness, thinking of how his prick would stretch that mouth, rewarded by the way Madeleine shakily exhales when Javert's fingertips trail along his nape. And certainly it cannot be a sin to allow Madeleine to condemn himself. It is the sinner who is kneeling before him. And if Javert encourages it...

He recoils from the word. No. All he has done has been in service to that terribly certainty that had taken hold in him, that he had thought to recognize the furtive secrecy of the escaped galley-slave, the tricks of the wicked forger who had taken in an entire town.

But Javert has realized his error long since. Now, it is but fascination to see to what depths the sin of this philanthropist runs, and perhaps, in part, an unwillingness to deny a magistrate. Let it not be said that Javert failed in showing proper respect to such an upstanding citizen, he thinks, triumph rushing hot through him once more as he looks at those lips pressed to his knee in obscene supplication.

Javert swallows thickly. “Forgive me, monsieur.” There is little politeness in the address, but Madeleine, after all, is in no position to demand politeness now. “It seems my trousers too have become stained on my way here.”

His prick still rests hot and full against his thigh. It is nearly enough to undo him, to see himself bared and hard, and Madeleine's sinful mouth so close. At his words, Madeleine hesitates, and Javert wonders breathlessly whether this will be too much, whether now, the man will regain his senses and come up with an excuse and send him away...

Instead, shyly, excruciatingly slow, Madeleine presses his mouth to the tense muscles of Javert's thigh, where there is not a speck of dust to be found on the black cloth of his trousers. Javert watches, the pulse between his legs speeding up. His fingers keep gently stroking Madeleine's nape in encouragement.

The cat-sharp pleasure within him coils and tightens, a honed weapon. Breathless, he watches as the impossible comes to pass, as some demon turns the nightmare to gleeful reality, the soft mouth moving up Javert's thigh, his eyes downcast, as obedient as the lowest servant now, and the sight boils hot in Javert's guts. Who can fault him now when certainly it is this man who is at fault here?

Madeleine hesitates at last, so close now that he would need to lean forward just a little to kiss in supplication what his unbecoming servility has made swell hard and hot. Another drop of sticky fluid drips from it as Javert stares at Madeleine's lips, and now the man makes a pitiful, low sound, his breath hot as it moves against Javert's prick.

Javert does not talk. It is enough now to watch: everything is revealed on Madeleine's face. There are no secrets left between them. The mire into which this man has cast himself is obvious in the obscene longing on his face. There is fear too, which pleases Javert – perhaps it should not, but it is too late to hold back the triumph that spreads with lazy glee through his limbs.

Madeleine is exposed in all his unnatural longings; there is now, at last, no more lie. Madeleine still cannot look up to meet Javert's eyes – but he cannot look away from Javert's prick either, and Javert in turn cannot look away from the way this man is at last reduced to complete vulnerability.

Madeleine is breathing heavily. The pulse between Javert's legs is painful fire now, and finally, Madeleine's tongue is tentatively pressed to the crown of his prick, a tiny swipe that makes his prick jerk with shocked pleasure, and Madeleine flinches back.

Javert swallows heavily.

“No, monsieur,” he says, and is grateful that he can speak at all, “With such stains, you will only make it worse if you brush at it. This certainly needs to be soaked.”

He cannot even say if Madeleine has heard what he said. Madeleine's cheeks are still flushed and his eyes downcast, but he is trembling now and, as if drawn by Javert's voice, helplessly moves closer again. This time, Madeleine's tongue swipes around the head, and Javert has to bite back a groan at how strangely hot and wet it feels. Madeleine keeps licking at him with tentative focus, and Javert can feel the flush of shame heating Madeleine's skin as he allows his fingertips to graze the man's nape again. Well, Madeleine has reason to be ashamed, Javert thinks as the hunger within him twists like a beasts with claws and fangs that wants to break free. Madeleine should be ashamed. He should–

The tip of his prick glistens red and wet. Madeleine's lips gleam with the fluid that keeps dripping from his prick. Again Javert remembers the shock on Madeleine's face, how still he held himself even when Javert's spend was spattered all over his face. How willingly that hot mouth received his fingers...

Javert has to swallow the groan that rises in his throat at the memory, watching instead how that hot tongue shyly traces along the foreskin. Madeleine seems to like this well enough, he thinks with smug triumph, and allows himself to ponder for a moment how willingly that mouth would open if he were to push his prick into his mouth, make him take the entire hot, swollen length of him, force him to hold the full weight of his sin on his tongue and show himself grateful for it...

But not yet. Not yet. It is too sweet to see the man brought low, to watch him flush and know that Madeleine debases himself of his own free will.

A shudder of lust runs through Javert when at last Madeleine looks up. He hardly recognizes the mayor; that creature on his knees before him seems to be someone else, cheeks red with shame, lips swollen and wet. His eyes are wide and soft and unguarded, looking up at Javert at last as though he is asking for permission, and Javert had not thought the triumph that is burning within him could get any sweeter. But this is sweeter still: to have Madeleine face him, and to see in his eyes the shameful awareness of just what he is doing, even as his lips part and at last Javert's prick slides inside.

Javert groans again, still barely able to believe this sight he sees: that mouth that utters orders and prayers with such devotion sucking now with similar devotion at the glistening, blood-dark crown, eyelashes chastely lowered although there is nothing chaste about the act at all, not at all.

Javert's hand slides from Madeleine's nape to touch his face instead. His fingertips trace his cheek, feeling Madeleine's mouth work around the thick length that stretches red lips as the tip of his prick rests on his tongue, surrounded by wet heat.

“Very good, monsieur,” Javert murmurs, can hardly believe what he is saying. The man on his knees before him trembles at his words – but he cannot protest, can say nothing in response, because on his tongue rests the full weight of Javert, and Javert groans again.

“Very good,” he repeats, murmurs nonsensical praise while his fingers touch skin that heats even more at his words. But Madeleine’s neck remains bent, his eyes devoutly lowered, his mouth open and warm for him – and then it is too much and pleasure rushes through and out of him, the act nearly violent in its suddenness. Javert feels a hint of embarrassment well up at how quickly this happened, but then Madeleine's lashes rise and the man looks up at him. Javert's prick is still jerking lazily on his tongue, spilling ribbon after ribbon of thick, hot fluid to fill that obedient mouth, and Javert can see the shock and the hint of tears gleaming in dazed, disbelieving eyes. There is shame too – and the sight of that makes his prick twitch again and release another thick string of his spend. Yes, there is hot shame in the blush of his cheeks and the wet eyes, and also, there is too that craven longing that had Javert confounded for so long. Ridiculous that he had once thought Madeleine a former galley-slave, he thinks with near relief.

When it is done, he strokes the mayor's cheek gently with his hand, noting how easily Madeleine submits to that caress, as though it was Javert who did him a favor by making use of his mouth. Javert's lips twist into a little smile. Perhaps he did. After all, Javert has always striven to serve his superiors well, no matter which faults of character those might exhibit.

Again he watches breathlessly as those red lips part and allow his prick to slip from them. It is slick with saliva and his come, and he makes certain to rub it over Madeleine's swollen, wet lips after he has pulled out. Madeleine licks his lips, still looking up at him with dazed eyes, and Javert shivers when that hot tongue brushes the tip of his cock again for a moment.

How good he looks like that, something within him thinks, something wild and hungry that he might lock away at other times, lest it offend the honest citizens it is his duty to guard. But it is not Javert who gives offense here. It is not Javert who has set up the pieces of this game they are playing, and if a magistrate desires to make a pawn of himself, certainly it is only right that Javert shall fill the place that has been demanded of him.

At last, Madeleine moves back. He remains on his knees, his lips still obscenely wet, and cautiously cleans away a drop of Javert's seed with a touch of his tongue. His face flushes an even deeper red as Javert's eyes linger with lazy contentment – for once, Javert is filled by the smugness of the cat after the kill even though he has made no arrest today.

There, between Madeleine's legs, the man's shameful arousal is still pressing against the fabric. Javert allows his eyes to linger there as well. They have played this game often enough now that it gives Javert almost greater pleasure to look at Madeleine aching after such depravity, knowing that he will not touch himself – will certainly spend the night tossing and turning in his bed while he is too hard to sleep, and too ashamed to do anything about it. Yes, that is very nearly as sweet as the shock on his face when Javert's prick spilled his release all over him. Javert thinks of how tonight he will wrap his hand around his own prick and give himself a slow release while thinking of that mouth spreading around his prick. The thought makes him smiles slowly at the mayor until the man shakily exhales and averts his eyes, that pink tongue licking at his swollen lips once more.


	2. Petit-Picpus

The moon is not quite full, but bright enough that the light fills the small chapel that sleeps forgotten in a corner of the quiet garden of Petit-Picpus. Valjean has wandered inside with the slow, weary steps of the penitent man walking to Santiago – a strange pilgrimage it is, and one he is certain the sisters would not approve of, although time and again he finds himself here in the crumbling sanctuary. Outside the chapel, his name is Fauchelevent, and he is a quiet, hard-working man who loves his daughter and God alike and pleases the Mother Superior with how easily he has fit himself into the strict routine of the convent.

Inside the chapel, beneath the roof that has half given way and allows the moon to shed a stark light onto his sins, he takes to his knees, the stone beneath him reassuringly hard, and raises his face in quiet plea to the picture of a saint that stares down at him from an alcove. Here, his name is Jean Valjean, and he trembles on his knees like the wretch he is, all of his sins and his crimes bared to the eyes of the saints who look down on him, cold and unmoved by the pitiful sight he must be where they proudly resisted temptation.

He could be happy in the convent. He _is_ happy in the convent. The happiness he has come to know here is greater than he has any right to experience.

And yet. Sometimes, when he has sunk into complacency, when he comes close to forgetting his own name, he will be working on his knees in a patch of cabbages, and pause to wipe the sweat from his face, and there will be a sudden call outside the walls of the convent, the sound of a horse speeding through narrow streets, and he will freeze, the blood in his veins scalding him from the inside with the heat of his fear and his shame as his heart beats that name _Javert_.

The fear never quite leaves. No matter how much time passes; no matter how many months pass quietly in the never-ending cycle of sowing, weeding, watering, harvesting. There will be days – entire weeks even – when he is no one but Fauchelevent, when he does not tremble and listen fearfully for the voices of strangers. Then a priest will visit and his voice will echo through a corridor and Valjean will freeze, his heart pounding at the thought that the police has come to search the convent. Or the Mother Superior will demand his presence, and he will tremble as he walks to her room like a man walking towards the scaffold. The letter she waves at him will be an order from the police to deliver him to justice before he takes it into his shaking hands to find a list of seeds and tools Fauchelevent needs to purchase on his next journey beyond the walls of the convent.

The truth burns him. He groans softly as he looks up at a marble saint who stares back in quiet judgment. The truth is a brand on his heart. What does it matter that they have not burned it into his skin when he still feels it burning it inside with every heart-beat?

There are the crimes he carries within him wherever he goes, the worst of them that coin he stole from the child. He turns his head and looks at where Christ hangs from the cross, his eyes weary and his face streaked with blood, bearing the weight of so many sinners. Had Christ not forgiven the Penitent Thief? Almost Valjean wants to plead for the same forgiveness, selfishly add to the burden of sin. And yet, as always, the prayer sticks in his throat when he remembers what condemns him, what he cannot be delivered from: that sin that he willingly chose in his weakness, again and again.

He makes a broken sound, trembling before the all-seeing eyes of his judges. He prostrates himself, stretches out his arms on the cold stone in supplication, making reparation as the sisters do, who willingly suffer even though they are good and pure where he is tarnished.

The stone is cold and hard beneath him. He feels the heaviness of his own weakness and sin like a stone weighing him down. In the darkness of the chapel, memories which do not belong here return, the way they return to him again time and again when he sleeps in Fauchelevent's hut. It is impossible to escape the memories, although he tries. In the end, there is as ever no choice but this: to leave his bed in the darkness, his body burning with shame and want alike, knowing himself damned.

It throbs through him now, the memory. The breathlessness of that first time he sank to his knees. Had he truly sought to prove something to Javert then? Had he thought to distract him from his suspicions? He can no longer say. All that remains from that moment is the way his heartbeat resounded in his ears, the terrible thing within him giving way to relief, only that it went deeper, deeper... How terribly alike it was to the deep joy that can sometimes be found in meditation on his knees before the cross, and yet, it was different, made his heart race and his cheeks flush and–

He moans in agony. It made his flesh stir, the way it is stirred now, pressing heavy and eager against the ground. The need contained within it seems so alien and overwhelming that he sometimes thinks that if he could but be free of it, he could live in happiness here in the convent until the end of his days.

He presses his fingers against the ground, feels the cracks in the stone and small pebbles. Again the the damning heat pulses through his blood makes him see Javert seated before him. What devil made him kneel and touch his fingers to his boots?

The moon sheds a harsh light onto his sins. With a shudder Valjean admits to himself that at first, it was pride. Pride in how good a man he had become. Pride in his own philanthropy and humbleness. And he had desired to show it off before Javert, to say to this man who watched him with the suspicious hunger of a wolf at all times: _See what kind of man you are suspecting! See how that man is so good and humble that he would eagerly kneel before you, unaware of the terrible things you suspect him off!_

Such pride is a sin. And he reaped the rewards of such sin when he knelt before Javert, eagerly abasing himself out of prideful humility. Something within him had taken a deep breath when his hands first ran over Javert's boots, had inhaled and breathed in the scent of leather and wax, and had woken once and for all from what deep slumber kept this beast hidden within his chest for so long.

It was pride at first, but not for long.

He makes a small, miserable sound there on the cold ground of the chapel, shivering helplessly beneath the eyes of Christ and the Saints, all of whom know of his sins. He cannot lie, not even to himself. Not here, where his soul is bared for judgment. His fingers press again into the small cracks of the floor. His body aches against the granite, full and hot and throbbing with the terrible unrest that calls for him to touch, to find some sort of release for the memories of sin that haunt him still and will not leave him.

“ _Domine, non sum dignus, ut intres sub tectum meum._ ”

His voice cracks. It is no use. Once woken, the memories will not let him rest. Neither can the heat that makes his body flush be quenched. He has tried – he tries still, pressing his forehead to the stone in subjugation, murmuring a prayer into the stone that makes the bones of his hips ache, and still he feels that terrible sense of elation as he sank to his knees that first time. The heat within his chest made him yearn to forget that this was Javert, just so that he could remain there on his knees and bend his head and – perhaps – voicelessly pray for forgiveness, and know himself forgiven at last...

But there was only ever one man who raised Valjean from his knees, who touched him with kind hands and an even kinder soul, and who allowed his light to wash the tarnish from Valjean's bitter heart.

He tries to think of him now, of his smile, of those hands that had willingly touched him – him, the wretch! The convict! – and yet he finds that he cannot. Instead he trembles when he remembers the sensation of Javert's fingers stroking through his hair, resting against his nape, heavy enough to reassure and unsettle at once.

It has always been impossible to forget that this was Javert. How could it not be unsettling? If Javert knew – and did he not suspect already? – he would chain Valjean and have him dragged back to Toulon without a single second of remorse.

And yet, there was a sense of reassurance in the touch, because–

Valjean makes a pitiful sound as the memory pierces his chest, crushed by the full weight of his sin here beneath the eyes of the watching saints.

It is true. A part of him craved it. A part of him has never known happiness like this: to kneel in quiet surrender, to offer himself up to someone else out of his own free will, without the weight of chains or the pain of the lash to command him, and to have that taken from his hands and be rewarded with a kind touch in turn.

He groans again, tears spilling from his eyes even as his body throbs relentlessly against the hard stone. But the memory has been woken, and now it cannot be pulled back inside, now it all spills out of him, here at the feet of Christ who looks down upon his pitiful sins from the cross.

There was more. There was more, of course: there was the tension. The way Javert's body would grow taut and his breathing heavy as Valjean worked at his feet, polishing nearly spotless boots with lowered eyes. There was the bulge between Javert's own legs, and the way Valjean's eyes returned to it again and again, terrified by the helpless desire to see what was hidden beneath.

Then there was the day Javert bared himself – and why should he not? It was not he who knelt. It was not he who was begging for abasement – and Valjean's heart had beaten fearfully in his chest, and terror had gripped him because he should have stood and walked away, and yet his body had ached with the need to stay and to give himself up, to let Javert do what he wanted to do.

Even now, Valjean remembers the way Javert's fingers were slid into his mouth, wet with Javert's bitter semen. Even now his tongue curls against the roof of his mouth in desperate hunger for that reassuring thickness of the fingers on his tongue, and the shame that made him tremble and yet only fanned the fire that burned within him when Javert wiped his own release off his face with gentle fingers.

Even now –

He sobs, tears falling from his eyes at last as the saints sit in judgment above him and he shivers beneath them, remembering how he opened his mouth for Javert and sucked on the prick that had rested heavy and hot on his tongue. How can one ask for forgiveness for such a thing? How can such desires be expiated if his body still burns with the same cravings? Were Javert here now–

Something within him tightens, a thread pulled taut, heat suffusing his body even as his heart races with terror at the thought of Javert scaling the walls, Javert coming upon him in the chapel, Javert–

The saints above him scowl in consternation. Christ averts his face, blood dripping from the thorns and nails that pierce his flesh to splash hot and wet onto where Valjean is stretched out in surrender beneath, and then he tenses and weeps when the thread within him snaps and he is spilled out himself. His shame drenches his trousers and stains the hallowed ground upon which he rests, and he can still feel the weight of Javert on his tongue, and the way his fingers rested warm against his neck as Valjean felt him swell in his mouth.

The bitterness of Javert remains on his tongue even as he weeps. He tries to pray, but his lips will not form words. The shame that fills him now is bitter as gall. All warmth has fled; he cannot even think of Javert without recoiling in horror and disgust. What sort of man craves such debasement, he asks himself. The saints above him remain quiet.

His body hurts. His trousers are damp and sticky. The marrow of his bones aches with the despair and cold disgust that now take the place of the false heat that rushed through him moments ago. The stone is cold and hard beneath his body; his shoulders and knees ache, and he stretches out his arms as far as he can as he weeps silently, leaves rustling in the wind. The saints avert their eyes while the moon sheds light onto all of his sins.

He would make expiation as the sisters do, but what right has he to ask for forgiveness for such a thing? The Bishop forgave him a theft, and he has striven ever since to be an honest man, to do good and find a way to make up for the sins of his past. But this – it is a sin he cannot beg forgiveness for. Even now he feels no remorse, only the crippling shame and despair, and yet he knows that the memories will return, again and again. And again Valjean will flush and think of what it felt like to sink to his knees and shed all of himself for a moment, and to see Javert roused and bared, thickening before his eyes. His mouth will once again ache with the memory of Javert's weight, and the shameful need for it will return, and he will think of that kind touch to his hair.

He groans and shudders and thinks of Cosette innocently asleep with the other girls, Fauchelevent sleeping deeply after a glass of wine.

God has led him here. God has granted him a happiness he has never thought he would know. Here, in the garden of the convent, they could be happy until age and death takes him – if only he had not brought this sin with him into the convent. If only he could be free of the memory and the terrible heat that even now fills him when he thinks of a gentle touch to his bowed head.

But this sin is a part of him. He has brought it with him to this place of devotion, and here, where the sisters suffer so that those they pray for might be forgiven, Valjean feels the weight of it increase until it is nearly unbearable.

His sin is not something that can be forgiven. Most of all, it is his own burden to carry. No other may take this sin from him. This shameful weakness that he finds knit into his soul is his own burden and his own shame, and the thought of one of the sisters prostrate before the cross all night tainted by the weight of it fills him with an unbearable horror.

No other can bear this for him. No one can absolve him of this. _Domine, adauge nobis fidem._ Again, he murmurs it through his tears, concentrates on the ache of his muscles and bones.

He will be sore and in pain the next morning. It will take an hour of work in the sunshine before his limbs will move without piercing pain. He will be exhausted, and nearly dead on his feet by evening.

The thought at last makes the tears stop, and he breathes deeply and concentrates on the coldness of the ground seeping into his bones. And is it not right that he offers expiation in his own way?

The ache of his muscles has calmed him a little, and the coldness drives the heat of shame away. He is able to breathe freely again after a while. The ache seems nearly sweet now. Has not their Savior suffered worse? The wretch Jean Valjean does not belong into the convent's church, where the sisters gather with the purity of angels before the glory of the altar. But here, in this crumbling chapel, where the moon and the wind and the rain all find entrance, even a wretch like him is welcome. He breathes calmly as his heart beats against the cold ground, again and again, until he feels it ringing through him like a church-bell even as the ache of his shoulders grows worse.

He presses his lips to the cold stone beneath him. His eyes are closed. He is calm now. He offers himself up and trembles in pain and overwhelmed devotion. His tongue traces a cross onto the stone, and he murmurs _ego servus tuus_ as he licks the dusty ground, again and again, his arms stretched out as wide as they will go. Prostrate before the cross, cold and aching, his thoughts are free of sin at last, and the surrender he offers up fills his heart with a sweet rapture that grows the more he endures on the stone.


	3. Paris, 1832

# 1.

There are days in Javert's life which he remembers with perfect clarity. One of them is the first time Madeleine – Jean Valjean, he corrects himself sharply – sank to his knees before him with fearful devotion, as though the act were something holy. There is the moment Valjean took him into his mouth for the first time, and the intense intimacy of the heat and the softness that made up the inside of Valjean's mouth would still bring Javert to raging hardness if he would allow himself to linger on that thought for more than a heartbeat.

There is the moment when he looked up at the man who had just given him a coin, recognition running through him hot and fast as his eyes lingered on the mouth. He had aged – but still, Javert thought, but still, his heart racing in a way that disgusts him even now although then he had told himself that it was but pleasure at having the man so unexpectedly in his grasp at last. Still. That man was Jean Valjean. A part of him had known immediately.

Now, when the man comes into the tap-room where Javert is still tied to a table, recognition hits him once more with violent precision, a blow to his gut that leaves him unable to breathe for a moment. He stares at the man who has eluded him for so long, who once looked up at him with wide, vulnerable eyes and kissed his prick with the devotion of a priest – who now is given Javert's life and that final opportunity to enact revenge.

Javert's head is reeling. Perhaps it is right that it ends like this. Valjean will know at last that Javert will not bend, that Javert cannot be bribed, neither with gold nor with a soft, sinful mouth, nor...

He clenches his jaw against the heat that rises even now at the damning memory.

He should have never given in. He should not have allowed it to happen. The man's weakness had disgusted him then, and rightfully so, he tells himself even as lust and fear war within him once more. A few steps away, men arrange for the taking of his life like a chore to be handed off to the first volunteer. Javert's lips part for a soundless laugh. Little do they know. What would they say if they knew that the man they hand his life over to–

All thought is gone when Valjean grips the rope that binds him. Javert stares up at him and laughs hoarsely even as he is pulled away. Well, let Valjean do what he has to. Javert is not afraid. And a part of him is pleased that now, at last, the order of the world is once more established, and Valjean is at last revealed for what he is: a man who would gladly murder an officer of the police, a man bent on revenge, who asked the pleasure of blowing out his brains.

Javert is not pleased that he will die, but he is relieved that now, at last, he can die without remembering the way the man's lashes trembled against his skin.

He groans as he is pushed against a wall. There is still strength in Valjean; even as Javert's hands twist helplessly behind his own back, he cannot help but think of it, breathless and lightheaded and pleased. He will die with this man at last admitting to the unchangeable fact that Jean Valjean is a murderer, a thief, that he has not changed and never will and that Javert–

The rope that holds him bound is cut, and Javert, who has been waiting for the painful slide of iron into his skin, cannot believe what Valjean says even now.

Free. How can he be free? His lips twist into a snarl – and there is Valjean, kneeling before him, slicing through the rope at his feet. Javert draws in a sharp breath as something hits him and drives all air from him until he has to lean back against the wall for support.

Arousal floods his veins once more, a sharp and brutal thing brought about by that man on his knees before him. Even now, even with the danger surrounding them and the certitude that the man could take his life with a quick jab, Javert's fingers itch to reach out and grab the locks that have turned white, turn up that head to feast on the surrender in Valjean's eyes

And then Valjean looks up, and he can see it all again. The ache between his legs is bitter and familiar as his prick swells and fills his trousers with sudden force, even as Javert breathes heavily and stares down. Valjean in turn looks up at him from quiet, tired eyes, silent and motionless. Javert thinks again of the heat of his skin as he trailed his fingertips across his nape, the softness of those lips which a part of him knows could be made to open obediently for him once more. Valjean swallows, and his lips part. The small sound he makes is sad and desperate at once, and Javert's prick _aches_ until he thinks he will go insane – and then Valjean averts his face and rises, and Javert makes a groan through clenched teeth, disgusted and horrified by this animal need within him.

“Have a care, Valjean!” he says. It is intended to be a threat, but the words come out breathless and desperate. When he reaches out to fist his hand in Valjean's hair, the man gasps and allows him to pull his head back for a moment.

Javert stares into his eyes. The eyes of a trapped animal, he thinks, dark and desperate and full of pain. And yet Valjean's mouth is still tempting and soft. Something within him wants to crush that mouth against his own and bite those soft lips until they are bruised red and tempting again, until Valjean opens his mouth for him in surrender...

He snarls and pushes Valjean away, and Valjean, too late, raises the pistol.

“Go,” Valjean says and Javert tells himself that he is not fleeing, that he has Valjean's address, that none of his deeds matter because he, Javert, knows the truth. He will have his surrender. He will have him in chains again.

# 2.

When he decides that now there is no choice left but to resign from this life that makes no sense anymore, Valjean is there as well. It should not have surprised him – has the man not haunted him like a demon both in his waking moments and his dreams for so long?

And yet, something about this seems unfair. Javert has decided to let him go; certainly Valjean can at least do him the courtesy of releasing him from this curse at last. Something within him is trembling; the certainty that has filled him for all of his life is unmoored, and now he drifts like a boat without anchor.

It will be good to leave all of this behind, he thinks, even as he listens to the roar of the water below. No more doubt. No more recriminations. No more knowing himself to be wrong, to have been wrong all of his life, to–

He bites back a laugh as Valjean's hand closes around his arm. Well, perhaps that is only right. Has he been wrong about him, too? In Montreuil, Javert was right about his suspicions after all. But – was he wrong about what he did then? The memory turns in his head, ever faster, a maelstrom of dark thoughts and twisted lust and – even now – a helpless desire that makes the wooden heart inside him throb with the rush of sap.

Maybe he was wrong about that too. But has the man not offered? Was it not Madeleine – Valjean – who was wrong then?

In torment, Javert twists his free hand into his hair, panting as he stands there at the edge of the water, trapped between oblivion and Valjean.

"I wish you would talk to me, Javert."

Javert swallows and tugs on his hair in despair. Has Valjean spoken before? Has he missed what he said?

"What is there to say between us?" he says at last. "Do you want apologies? Well, you shall not have them. No more of that. No more doubt, no more – you will be rid of me, do you hear me, Jean Valjean? Be grateful for that."

"But what do you mean, Javert!"

Valjean's voice is exasperated and weary. Even now, Javert cannot help but think of the small sound the man made when he pressed a hesitant kiss to his prick, there in Montreuil. The memory is burned into his soul like a brand. How can he escape it? He has tried for a long time, but even now, beneath the roar of his conscience and the agony of a soul that has realized at last the many crimes that he, Javert, has committed, who has considered himself irreproachable all of his life – even now there is the heat of desire, a petty lust that makes him want to bury his fingers in Valjean's hair, pull back his head by it and watch him yield to that, watch that mouth part for a breathless gasp...

"No," he mutters at last, ignoring Valjean as he looks down at the water once more. "No more of that. This will end here. You will be free. Go. Let me at least have the dignity of choosing this myself."

He can feel the tightness of Valjean's grip on him. He wonders if he could break free. He wonders what those finger would feel like against his thigh.

He clenches his jaw until his teeth ache. He needs to be free of this.

"I do not understand."

Valjean's voice is soft, but his grip is firm, and again Javert wants to laugh. How strange it all seems now. Has this man truly once knelt before him? Did those hours in his office truly ever happen, those long moments when nothing seemed to exist but Madeleine's heavy breathing and the eager throb of blood between his own legs?

"You do not need to.” The words are clipped. Valjean's grip on his arm makes him shiver and want. He needs to escape this.

"Enough now. Release me!"

"Release you – and then?"

Javert laughs. "Do you need me to spell it out? I will not do you that favor. Let go, Jean Valjean. Leave. You might be strong, but I swear to you, I will pull you into the water with me if I have to."

He has no intention of doing that, but Valjean does not need to know that his head is already reeling, that the world has lost all certainty but for this one thing: that Jean Valjean is a good man who deserves to be free, who deserves to live when Javert must die.

"It is very easy," he mutters in impatience after a moment when Valjean does not speak. "Come now. Let go."

Again Valjean remains silent. At last, in frustration, Javert turns to face him, and Valjean's eyes are wide with surprise and a pain that hits Javert. Valjean's hair is tousled by the wind here at the quays of the Seine, and again Javert's eyes linger on his lips that are bitten a tempting red. How obscene the sight is, Javert tells himself even as his own trousers tighten around his swelling flesh. A man that age should not look like that.

No– A good man like Valjean should not wake such desires in Javert. It is frustrating, and perhaps in the end but one more proof that it will be best to end this right here.

"Javert, why would you–"

"Come, let's have no more of this!" Javert bares his teeth in frustration as he tries to pull free of the grip but is not released. "You have no right to deny me!" he snarls at last, and the thought of casting himself into the abyss with this tormenting demon still chained to him seems more tempting with every passing moment.

"I don't know what you are saying." Valjean's voice is soft and strangely helpless when he speaks, and his eyes travel across Javert's face with a quiet plea, as if he is as asking for some sort of reassurance, for–

Javert forces the thought away. "You more than any other has reason to rejoice when I am gone," he bites out. "Think of Montreuil, if you must, remember–"

He cannot make himself say it.

"Now let me go. All of that is over."

Valjean licks his lips. His eyes slide nervously past Javert to the water, and then return to his face. The grip on his arm is still firm.

"If you... I am sorry if I made you feel," Valjean begins, then pauses. "You have no need to feel remorse for – for what happened in Montreuil, not... for that."

Once more that pink tongue moistens his lips, and Javert curses himself for the way his body flushes with heat at the sight. Again he thinks of how he brushed his prick against those soft lips. Again he thinks of how eager and grateful Valjean's mouth was for him.

"What do you know about what I feel?" Anger erupts within him once more at the way he cannot control these thoughts, these memories, even now when he knows that he should never have–

"Javert!"

He is very close to the water now. Valjean's hand is tight around his arm, but all it takes is one step...

"Please! Javert!"

“Leave!” he says, panting now with effort. Valjean's hand is still on him, and even now a part of Javert aches to grab his hair and push him to his knees.

“I do not understand – please, Javert, there is no need for this! Tell me what you want. Please, just come down, I'll do anything–”

“Anything?” A bitter laugh breaks free as he imagines once again the sight of that mouth opening for him. “Anything you say? Well then! Will you kneel again?”

He hurls the words out like a weapon. He intends them to cut. Such words have to cut, and he watches in satisfaction how Valjean's cheeks redden with shame, how his lips tremble and his eyes slide away, no longer able to hold his gaze.

Javert tells himself that this is what he needs to do. What does it matter that he has hurt him one final time? His death will be a gift for Valjean. That is all Javert has to give.

And then those strong hands loosen, and Javert is free at last as Valjean slowly sinks to his knees.

The sight is a shock. Javert cannot breathe, can only watch, speechless and tense as arousal races up his spine, his prick hardening with every painful heartbeat.

“If... if that is what you want?” Valjean's voice is hesitant and a little breathless. His eyes are wide as he looks up at Valjean.

What does he mean by this? Javert cannot make sense of it. But heat rushes through him; his mouth is dry and his throat closes and he cannot tear his eyes away from the sight before him.

What does Valjean mean by this, he asks himself again, even as his fingers shake and his prick presses hard against his trousers. He wants to make an end of this and find oblivion in the rapids of the Seine. He thinks of the sweet oblivion of Valjean's hot mouth, and knows himself trapped once more.

“You do not know what you are offering,” he says at last, his voice rough with the awful desires he keeps trying to swallow down. But again and again they rise, and he reaches down with trembling fingers at last to lightly touch the soft hair, that venerable head of white, and watches too as that caress turns into a harsh grip that pulls Valjean's head back.

The man offers no resistance. Of course, Javert thinks and bares his teeth. Of course.

“I told you that I have regarded myself as your prisoner since we parted,” Valjean offers at last. He speaks softly, but the words are firm; he is, Javert thinks and wants to laugh again, indeed determined to throw away his freedom, to offer himself up to Javert – to offer himself up to the chain and the lash and the torment he never deserved.

Well then. Javert is not certain what word there is for a man such as him, who quivers with the hunger of the hunting dog when a man kneels before him. But he knows he will not be a jailer again.

“What if I do not want to arrest you! You have no power over me, Jean Valjean. You never had,” he forces out, knowing it for the lie it is. Already he has accepted that he will not take that final step today. That moment is gone, brushed from the slate of his life by the softness of Valjean's hair between his fingers and the vulnerable curve of his throat. Does Valjean know? He doubts it.

Valjean looks up at him with quiet, weary despair. For a moment Javert remembers his expression when he carried that boy out of the sewers and wonders if to Valjean, Javert's life, too, is but another burden for him to carry.

Then Valjean turns his head. His hot breath ghosts across the sensitive inside of Javert's wrist, and then Valjean's lips follow, gently kissing his skin there, and Javert groans at that chaste brush of soft lips.

No, he corrects himself after a moment as he looks down at the bent neck, those broad, strong shoulders bowed in surrender before him.

No. There is nothing chaste about this. There has never been.


	4. Paris, 1833

# 1.

It is quiet. This is one of the things he likes about the small apartment in the Rue de l'Homme-Armé – they are safe here from the noise of carriages and carts. All of the bustle of Paris is left behind; these small roads that offer no space for horse and carriage could just as well be situated in a small village somewhere far away.

Valjean cannot remember much of the streets of his youth, and he does not try to. He remembers Digne, and how he searched for shelter there. He remembers too how he knelt and wept. He remembers the kind touch of the Bishop, and once again his mind shudders away from the memory as he wonders what he would think of Valjean now. What would he think, if he knew–?

After that, there was Montreuil. Thoughts of Montreuil are safer, even though these memories too seem far away. Valjean remembers walking down streets and the laughter of the children that followed. It is a baffling memory – was that man truly him? The images he sees are already dim in his mind, seen through the threadbare, yellowed curtain of age. Was that man ever truly him? These days, he cannot imagine anymore what it was like to be responsible for the well-being of an entire town. So many people, so many letters; so much misery, and he the only one who saw and tried to reach out to those who were in need.

It seems strange now to think of the office he accepted. Certainly that was an act of pride, he thinks; yes, for a man who could not wear his own name, that was pride, and it did not last long.

Then, there was the convent, and that memory at last brings a smile to his lips. After he had fled through Paris with Cosette in his arms, it truly seemed as though God had lifted him and taken him away from peril, to set him down in a Garden Eden: a place where there was nothing but peace and goodness, the voices of the Sisters eternally raised in prayer, and the quiet delight of watching the garden grow and yield its harvest year after year while Cosette grew alongside it.

Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps he should have returned to the convent. But Cosette would have worried. He had thought to quietly step outside of her light: it shines for Pontmercy now, whom she loves, and that is right, as he is her husband.

But it is hard, so hard, to return to the emptiness, now that he has known love for so many years. It weighs him down with cold hands, and if he could, he would surrender to the burden that rests ever more heavily on his aching shoulders until he is at last crushed beneath it. No scandal would ever touch Cosette and her happiness. And he would simply vanish away, like mist that lifts in the morning when the sun rises: there one moment, gone the other, and no one thinks to ask where it has gone or where it came from. The sun would still shine on Cosette, and no shadow would ever touch her joy.

Javert makes an impatient sound and turns away from the window, and Valjean watches him from the corner of his eye.

Yes – now there is Javert, and Valjean cannot leave, as much as the thought chafes sometimes that he has to linger and bear the guilt and shame for this man of all men.

But these notions, too, are unbecoming. Valjean tries to gather his thoughts, ashamed even now for how ungraciously he thought of Javert. Javert had nearly put an end to his own life – how can he begrudge Javert the company he seems to desire?

Valjean looks away from Javert, puzzled by his own thoughts. No, certainly Javert does not desire his company.

His eyes skim over the words of the novel still open on his lap. He cannot make sense of them; the sentences hold no meaning as his mind is still caught up in the puzzle that is Javert.

Valjean cannot offer comfort to such a man. But even so, Javert does not reject his company. It is a strange, tense thing between them. There is the weight of what happened all those long years ago. There is on one side of the scale the baffling knowledge that Javert sought to end his own life. There is on the other side Valjean's own shame, which certainly Javert has to remember every time he looks at him.

Valjean still prays that the secrets of these many years will die with him. It is exhausting to know that the past has caught up with him once more in the shape of Javert. He is old and weary now, and for so many years he dreamed of falling to his knees and clasping his hands in prayer and offering up his life, his body, his service, if only he were shown mercy in return...

But he lived in a world without mercy. That lesson had been taught too harshly. Only once, only once had he given in, had knelt before Javert and felt some of the weight on his shoulders lift, to be exchanged for a different tension that was nearly as bad, and yet...

And yet there was that one moment of fragile ecstasy when he mouthed at Javert, felt him fill his mouth. There was nothing but heat and urgency inside him, and the sensation of fingers stroking his neck – those strong fingers, those large, cruel hands, petting him like one would pet a dog, perhaps, and yet something within him had wanted to lean into the touch and beg for more.

He flushes and looks away from the book with a silent sigh. Will he never be free of this? What would Javert think if he knew that Valjean thinks of it still, after so many years, when now it is Javert who feels guilt for the past?

Valjean should be grateful and accept that baffling forgiveness – but he cannot. He remembers it still, the heat on his tongue, Javert filling his mouth, and the memory is torment because even now he thinks of how he knelt before Javert by the bridge. Even now a helpless part deep within him wonders what it would have been like had Javert's fingers touched his hair again, had pulled him close. He has run for so long. Perhaps there would have been peace in surrender.

He cannot remember when he last felt peace. No matter where he hides, no matter how he dresses or where he goes, fear has always walked by his side. But to give in – to give up – to surrender, to let happen what will –

He looks again at Javert. Javert is muttering to himself, the paper in his hand, pacing from the window to the table where stands a small, wooden crucifix, to the shelf that holds books, and back to the window again. Valjean is not quite certain what Javert is complaining about; it could be anything, from the weather to the price of bread to Valjean's selection of books. Javert no longer complains about Valjean's intervention there at the water, but there is an impatience within him now. As though he still is not happy that Valjean did not allow him to end his own life in an act of madness. Valjean has never expected gratefulness from Javert – and yet, sometimes it seems that Javert has accepted his own life only begrudgingly, looking with baffled annoyance at Valjean when Valjean remains silent.

He does not know what Javert wants from him. Valjean has no answers, no absolution. He would let Javert take him back in irons, but Javert does not want that either. Perhaps that is why Javert seems eternally angry. All the same, Valjean cannot make himself ask to be chained once more; the memory that comes to visit at night still makes him gasp for air in terror when he wakes.

He does not know what it is Javert wants from him when he has nothing to give. But there Javert is; eternally angry at something he will not voice; eternally leaving, eternally returning.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that Valjean has grown used to it. How it made him tremble in the convent, to imagine Javert scaling the wall to come after him, to surprise him in the garden one day! And now Javert steps in through his door as if he belongs here, and Valjean gives way and lets Javert take over the small apartment with his presence, shivering, sometimes, still, to see Javert stand in his own bedroom. He does not know what Javert wants of him; but he cannot deny him.

It is true what he has told Javert: he has considered himself his prisoner since that moment. He still is. He will be, until his death, maybe. It does not matter that Javert will not actually chain him. He gives way to Javert, and Javert takes up what space of his life Valjean yields, and here they remain, like two animals locked in the same cage who can only stare at each other with distrust.

It would be easier if Javert would command him. But Javert does not. Instead, Javert makes an unhappy sound and steps towards the bookshelf once more, running his fingers over the backs of the books there in disdain while a shiver and a memory rolls through Valjean: those fingers warm and gentle at his nape. Would they still be gentle with him now? Or would they press in silent command? Would they force his head down, or tilt it up, or encourage him tersely to soothe Javert's frustration with–

Valjean flushes and looks down at his book once more in consternation. How can these desires have such a hold on him? It has been so long, and has he not led a good life since then? Perhaps in prayer his soul can find calm instead of this unrest.

Deliberately, he puts the book down, then rises. Javert remains standing in front of the shelf.

Valjean forces himself to keep his eyes on the simple crucifix as he kneels. He yearns for that peace that always comes after long minutes on his knees, the ache of his old body fading away together with the turmoil of his mind; all thought poured out of him until he is an empty vessel, patient, obedient, to be filled with goodness and grace instead.

He does not realize his a mistake until Javert moves, and he becomes aware of how close Javert is. The sound his boots make on the floor seems unnaturally loud, and once again heat floods Valjean as memories of Montreuil return. He keeps his eyes on the cross, but his fingers shake as he clasps them in prayer, and when Javert takes a step closer, he bends his head, his lips moving uselessly because all words of prayer have fled from his mind.

His neck prickles with heat. He imagines Javert's gaze on it. Javert's hot breath – no, Valjean tells himself, it is impossible! It is not Javert's breath he feels. And yet Javert is very close now – close enough that he feels Javert's trousers brush his arm.

He cannot raise his eyes to Christ anymore. That small cross suddenly seems far away, as though someone had taken him and pulled him out of the small room he knows so well. But Javert's presence turns it into a different place. His bedroom is no longer his quiet study. It has become a space where he kneels, small and abandoned and exposed, and above him stands Javert.

Black boots scrape against the wooden floor. There is the sound of heavy breathing. He cannot say if it is his own; the fearful pounding of his heartbeat drowns out all other sound. He swallows desperately. Saliva gathers in his mouth, and Javert is too close, and it is too hot, and he cannot breathe. His pulse throbs through him fierce and harsh like lightning beneath his skin, gathering heavily there between his legs.

He wants...

He wants that hand on his neck, ordering him, telling him what to do. He wants to leave the fear behind. He wants the ease of sinking into quietness, his mind growing calm with the meditation of prayer, or of his mouth stretched obediently around Javert's prick...

He exhales a shocked breath at his own thought. The fabric of Javert's trousers rasps against his cheek. Why does the man not talk, Valjean thinks desperately. Is it not enough Valjean has done for him already? Is it not enough that they are both here, and that Valjean gives way in all things if Javert pushes?

Certainly he cannot be expected to deal with this. Certainly in this, _in this_ , Javert will act, will push too, with fingers and voice, will strip the doubt and the fear from Valjean to turn it once more into something very simple...

“Praying again,” Javert says. The words sound derisive – a little angry even, perhaps. There is always a hint of anger in Javert, as though a world that refuses to operate under his premises has committed a personal slight against him. “Always praying.”

Valjean's head rises a little. His heart thuds fearfully in his chest, pressing against his ribs with every dull beat as though it seeks a way out; instinct still makes it yearn for escape and freedom at Javert's presence.

But Valjean is tired of running. And another part of him, a part that is not his heart but something deeper, the part of him that is warm, mortal flesh, notes with trembling attention the impatience of Javert's words, and the closeness of him. Everything could be so easy, that part of Valjean thinks in despair. Everything could be so simple if Javert would just make it so. Has Valjean not feared and doubted enough in all these long years? Is it not time now to put away that burden, to surrender himself – to God, to fate, or to whatever it means to remain here on his knees with Javert beside him...?

After a moment Javert speaks again, as if the silence has told him all he needs to know. Perhaps it does. Valjean becomes once more aware of how unnaturally fast his breath is coming, how obvious the flush of heat on his face has to be.

“Well, pray then,” Javert says after a moment, his voice strained. Valjean, whose lips have parted, suddenly finds his mouth too close to Javert when that large hand takes hold of him at last, those fingers that grip his hair certain where Javert's voice is not.

Valjean tries to swallow again, desperate, his eyes skimming past where something is surely straining against Javert's trousers. He exhales. He feels too hot, thoughts slithering away at the threat that is before him, the promise of it. His tongue is heavy in his mouth, his throat parched, and then Javert's fingers tighten imperceptibly, knuckles lightly brushing his nape like a caress, and he exhales again, surrendering to that pressure with relief until his sigh is an open-mouthed kiss.

Javert is warm and strangely alive beneath him. Valjean can feel him even through the fabric; he has to swallow again at how much he wants him. That memory has weighed on his mind for too long. And now, now that it seems so close, it seems hard to believe that it is real....

He cannot find words, but something within him dredges up prayers, breathes words unsuited to this – unsuited to him – against where beneath his lips, he can now feel Javert stir hard and warm, hidden away by cloth and given shape and reality by the worshipful attention of Valjean's mouth.

Perhaps it is not so blasphemous after all, Valjean thinks as he carefully mouths along the thick, hidden shape, learning its heft and its size with his mouth until his jaws ache with the need to hold it on his tongue, to feel it, crude and real, and speak his own worship with careful lips.

It is peace – and is that not what is important? Might God forgive him one moment of shameful passion?

Javert's fingers curl around his neck, even as Valjean breathes a _cor mundum crea in me, Deum_ against the thick shape of Javert. Warm fingertips rest lightly against his skin and Valjean feels young again all of a sudden – or free from his weariness, at least. He is transported back to that small, quiet room where Javert sat silently and where he knelt in silence too, where he touched Javert's boots, barely able to breathe from fear and a deep, helpless arousal. It is still there: a heaviness inside him, this heat that pulls him down even as he leans forward. His lips glide slowly along the hidden shape, his mouth searching out the heat and the heaviness that fills Javert at the sight of him on his knees. Should such a thing alarm him?

It should, and yet it is too much. He can only breathe hot air against Javert as he thinks with despair of the day Javert was in his mouth. Javert's hands were holding his face and his body burned, weightless, reckless, held in reality only by the unexpected gentleness of Javert's fingers that he has feared even then.

Is that what Javert wants of him?

His lips brush past the shape of the crown beneath the stretched fabric of Javert's trousers. Valjean's breath hitches, his prayer faltering for a moment.

Slowly, Javert's thumb strokes down his throat. He follows the hollow behind Valjean's ear down along the line of his pulse until Valjean shivers and presses the flat of his tongue to the fabric, curving it around the thick head as best he can.

Is it what Javert wants of him? The thought makes him despair, but he dares not look up. He cannot upset the balance of this moment, this thing he did not believe he would ever have again. Lust and fear form a dangerous equilibrium; the world around them stops as Valjean offers a thing that he knows deep in his heart should not be offered to Javert, never to Javert.

And yet, whom else could he offer such a thing? Javert, at least, will not be stained by it. Javert might indulge his sin, but Javert does not... Javert is not...

Javert's fingers tighten, his thumb stroking along his throat like a warning – or perhaps encouragement. Javert's breathing is loud now. His prick has unfurled to its full size, stretching blatantly beneath fabric damp from Valjean's worship. The words of prayer fall silent at last as he mouths at it with an eagerness that still makes his cheeks heat with despair at what Javert must think.

He tightens his hands into fists to keep himself from touching Javert. He wants desperately to open Javert's trousers, to feel him on his tongue – to take the salt of what he spills as communion, bitter as blood, sweet as wine – but he cannot.

He cannot.

He offers; Javert takes. He cannot ask for more than what he is already given. It is enough; it has to be enough – and then Javert makes a choked sound, and Valjean keeps pressing his mouth to him in devotion, soaking up the rhythm of the throbbing that spills his release into the cloth. Eagerly, his tongue molds itself to damp fabric, and a moan of despair for Javert's taste escapes him as he sucks on the clothed tip of Valjean's prick.

When it is all over, Javert lets go of him and stumbles away.

Valjean's lips ache from the constant rasp of the fabric. Javert leans against the table, panting, face turned away from Valjean.

Perhaps now he will –

Valjean does not even know what it is he desires. What can he ask for from Javert? An explanation? Can there be such a thing for something like this? A promise? An apology? _Javert's hands tightening in his hair again?_

He flushes and looks down, still on his knees, still breathing heavily himself, aware of the heaving of his chest and the small tremors that run through him, and the way his own prick strains hard for attention between his legs.

Javert takes a step, then another, then hesitates. Valjean listens to his own breathing and remembers the sound those boots made on the floor of his small office.

Javert walks past him even as Valjean shivers. Valjean cannot raise his head. He hears Javert walk towards the door. He hears him open it... and then there is silence.

Something twists inside Valjean as he imagines Javert walking out. His thoughts churn inside his head, vicious and loud like the river. If Javert leaves now, he will never come back, he thinks. Or, if Javert leaves now, Valjean can visit this night to try and mend whatever this is between them. If Javert would allow such a thing. If he would...

Valjean sees himself face-down on a narrow cot, hard and trembling, and Javert's hand in his hair as he is stripped with quiet relentlessness. He thinks of being made to bend, to give, to yield of himself until there is nothing left but the hands on him and the breath in his ear and the peace of abandoning all of himself...

Or, he imagines being met at Javert's door, Javert looking at him, facing this terrible thing between them at last as Javert pushes him against the wall and kisses him, holds his face in long, cruel fingers as a tongue takes his mouth with tenderness...

A terrible sound wants to escape him, something that is longing and fear and loneliness at once, sharp and aching in his throat. He swallows, again and again, wide-eyed, until there is the sound of the door and he is alone, and this thing is still trapped in his throat, sharp and painful like swallowing shards of glass.

# 2.

Valjean walks slowly as he leaves the house in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. His legs are heavy, his chest is empty; blackness sucks at him with every step he takes, as though he is walking ever deeper and deeper into a swamp. The thought brings a small amount of relief with it. How good it would be to walk and walk until he sinks in deeper and deeper, losing a part of him with every step he takes until at last it is undone and he is no more, the footsteps he has left behind filling with water until soon, even that final trace of his presence is wiped away.

How peaceful to just offer himself up to oblivion, instead of taking step after step on this cold, hard road, his muscles tense and aching from the weight on his shoulders. And how this burden has grown with day after passing day! The moments spent in Cosette's presence make it seem to disappear at times, but it always returns once he steps out of the small room in the cellar, and now... Now it is done at last. He knows he will not be back. She will be happy; she is already happy, and he, too, should be happy for her. Is that not all that is important? How selfish he is to cling to these moments, when Pontmercy knows the truth.

No, it is done at last. Valjean will not return, and she will be happy; she will have all the happiness she deserves, and perhaps, he thinks, taking another weary step forward, perhaps sometimes, she will think with affection of him, and remember how she laid her small, cold his into his own so trustingly...

A tear escapes his eye at the thought, and he stills for a moment there on the street. At last, he wipes it away with trembling fingers. He will know the joy of that no more. He will never hear that sweet voice say "Father" again, or feel her embrace, or listen to her read to him.

If all the happiness in the world is gone, will death be so frightful? He feels so weary now. He cannot think of what will be. The day stretches before him like a wall of gray stone; time becomes a prison once more, and he breathes wearily, feeling for a moment the weight of the green cap on his head. And is it not right that in the end, he will serve that sentence at last? Whether he sits in his small room or is chained in the bagne, it seems all the same to him: gray days of dullness, the endless waiting, nothing to occupy his mind but the senselessness of existence, until at last, the shackles will fall off and death will free him.

To sleep, and not to wake: it seems a favorable thing to him now. He forces himself onward still, thinking of his bed: in a few hours, he might close his eyes and pray for God to grant him rest at last, to bring to an end this life that has lost all usefulness.

He can almost understand now the lure of the water, Javert's determination to throw away that life God had given him. He is so tired, and it would not be so bad to find rest in the violent arms of the river. But these thoughts too are shameful. He cannot linger on them without feeling guilt choke him. Better to return home to the quiet safety of his room, to kneel in prayer, perhaps, and then to sleep. If God is merciful, a final sleep will claim him soon. How long has he carried this heavy burden? Certainly it is long enough that God will allow him to lay it down very soon.

His feet carry him towards the Place Royale, and then around the corner down the Rue de l'Egout, and then he hesitates and frowns. It is not the way home, he realizes, once he has walked past the Rue St. Antoine, his steps still slow and weary. Has his grief made him lose his way? He looks around in confusion. He has not intended to walk this way. He intended to–

His thoughts break off when he sees a small sign that spells out the name of the street, and he realizes just where his feet are carrying him.

For the first time since he left Cosette, a small smile appears on his lips, although it is tinged by weariness.

What foolishness this is. What is there to gain from it? Javert walked away and did not return; Valjean should not follow where he is not wanted. Is it not enough he tried to selfishly carve out a tiny place for himself in Cosette's life, bringing with him the taint of his past into her house again and again?

But Javert would not care, he thinks, breathlessly already from the exertion of the long walk.

Perhaps this is pointless. Perhaps there is indeed no sense in it. But Javert would not care. Javert would send him back home; or perhaps, perhaps, Javert would look at him with hungry triumph, and would not mind if Valjean were to kneel before him, and...

Even the thought of the act is distasteful in his own mind. How selfish he is. How selfish he has always been. No, Javert will not allow him in, he is certain of that. Javert will laugh at him, and close his door, and then...

Valjean does not know what follow. Perhaps then at last he will be weary enough to force his tired legs to carry him home, to fall into his bed, and to sleep and not wake again.

Javert does not close the door when Valjean knocks. Perhaps he should have expected that. Javert takes one look at him, and then his expression shutters, even as Valjean bends his head in remorse and shame at having come at all. One does not simply arrive unannounced in such situations. One would send a letter, he supposes, feeling a little helpless. Or a note with a gamin. Or–

His thoughts die away when Javert helps him take off his coat.

Valjean can breathe a little more freely, although his shoulders still ache from the weight that has borne down on them for so many years.

"Well. Jean Valjean. What brings you here?" Javert says abruptly, and then allows Valjean to shuffle in. He closes the door behind him and remains there, leaning against it as he studies Valjean with a frown.

Valjean does not speak as he looks around. He has been here a few times, after Javert recovered a little. The rooms is both familiar and unreal at once. It is a sparse chamber; it, he supposes, would suit him as well as it suits Javert, and yet, this is unmistakably Javert's home. There rests a letter; here is a small handful of coins by the door, maybe for the washerwoman; there is the bed, neat as everything about Javert, although the blanket is unraveling a little at one corner from wear...

These details make the place unreal. These hints that Javert has a life outside of those moments out of time that have existed between them. It is suddenly difficult to pretend that what happened – what still might happen again, he supposes, and feels a little shudder run through him – is something unreal, of no more consequence than a dream.

When he looks at Javert again, Javert frowns at his silence.

"Always you come back to me, Jean Valjean. Well! Out with it! What is it now?"

Valjean cannot speak. The grief inside him, this terrible emptiness that sucks at him, which during the past months has slowly devoured what joy remained him in life, cannot be given voice. All he wants is for the ache of this void inside him to be soothed; or, as Javert is not given to soothing, to be pulled away from it in some other way: to be torn from himself, to find oblivion, distraction.

Perhaps it was wrong to come here, he thinks with sinking misery, even as Javert steps closer, the frown on his face morphing into an expression that is nearly menacing. It is not that old derision for the convict, nor is it the old delight of having the old galley-slave in his hands once more, to grasp and chain him. This is different – but it is menace nevertheless. Javert no longer intends to surrender him to the law, he thinks and shivers when Javert stops in front of him. This new Javert intends for Valjean to surrender to Javert, perhaps...

Slowly, Valjean exhales, looking at Javert's hand with hollow eyes as it hangs in the distance between them. Did Javert intend to touch him? With longing Valjean remembers once more the warmth of those fingers against his nape. He closes his eyes. How very much he wants that comfort. How very much he does not deserve it.

When he opens his eyes again, the hand has returned to Javert's side.

"Well then! I see how it is.”

Javert's nostrils flare. His lips are narrow and cruel, and Valjean thinks with sudden longing of the sharps fangs and strong jaws of a wolf – or the piercing claws of a cat that finally tires of playing with the mouse, and ends its life with nonchalance.

Javert will not do such a thing. Javert would not. But there are other ways Javert can put an end to the torment that is this never-ending darkness in Valjean, now that the sun of his life has set. And is the night not the realm of the wolf? It does not seem so strange to close his eyes and abandon himself to sharp claws and fangs.

"Hold still," Javert says as he steps close. It is a command. The words are soft but sharp, and Valjean stands still, does not resist as his coat is removed. Javert exhales air in a little huff of heat against his face that might almost be a laugh, but there is cruelty in it, not amusement, when Javert's long fingers take hold of his cravat and slowly pull the knot apart, baring the flushed skin of his throat to Javert's eyes.

Valjean swallows and feels Javert's eyes watching the movement of his throat, and then his waistcoat is unbuttoned and pulled off as well, and he stands before Javert in his shirt.

"Look at that," Javert mutters, and then his hands wander downwards, push away suspenders and then unbutton his trousers while heat rushes hot towards Valjean's cheeks.

"No, no. Off with that as well," Javert demands, and Valjean obeys, stepping out of the garment with his hands helplessly by his side, his neck sticky with sweat. He knows he should be afraid. He swallows as Javert makes a soft sound, something almost a laugh, derisive as Valjean trembles and cannot meet his eyes.

"You come here. You come here, to my rooms, to – you come here into my life, and you think you can – no, no, Valjean. Enough of it. You come here and you do as I say. And I say – I demand this. This, if you want to stay here."

Valjean swallows, again and again, saliva gathering in his mouth as Javert's hands slowly, relentlessly lift the shirt. Even now, Valjean wonders if this is a test. It has to be, he thinks almost desperately as more and more of him is bared. He cannot look at Javert, but even so, it is enough to make him shiver: the fabric sliding past his thighs, imagining Javert's eyes there. Then it is lifted past his hips, and a ball of shame and heat twists and turns in his stomach even as the flesh between his legs warms with it.

To think of Javert's eyes there...

He cannot breathe at the thought, but the shirt is lifted yet higher, so that at last he has to raise his arms in surrender and allow Javert to lift it off him completely.

Now he is naked before Javert, completely revealed: the old, scarred body that is unmistakably that of the convict made vulnerable before him. Valjean trembles even now, but he does not move, does not even cover his shame. Javert has demanded this of him, and now, now that Valjean has nothing left, it seems almost a relief to have someone tell him what to do. Any order to give his day shape and form and turn him away from the black, hopeless mire of his thoughts. He will sink into it soon enough, he thinks... but for now, he wants to grasp at these straws Javert offers, pretend they might keep him afloat for a while yet.

Javert sees him for what he is. That is a relief in its own right. It reminds him that the decision he made was right. He has no place in the house of Pontmercy or in the life of Cosette – how could he?

This is who he is: scarred flesh, arms and legs that ever remember the weight of the chain, a body that returns to yielding before Javert like a cart rolling smoothly through old grooves once more.

Javert is still looking at him. Valjean can feel the heat of his gaze, the weight of it. Soon there will be a touch, he thinks. Does he hope it or fear it? He cannot even say; all thoughts have run together in his mind.

“Onto the bed,” Javert says at last. Valjean obeys numbly.

Javert's blanket scratches against his bare limbs. He shivers at the way it drags against his prick as he settles down. Is this truly happening? The roughness of wool against his skin tells him it is, but something within him, something breathless and fearful clings to the conviction that this is a nightmare. This is one of those dreams that haunt him betimes, when his limbs grow heavy and his breath fast and he does not run from Javert but gives himself over to the inevitable...

Another quiet sound. Is it derision? Is it–

Valjean does not allow himself to think. All he can do is wait. He feels the coolness of air against his bare limbs, notes the unfamiliarity of Javert's mattress which is accustomed to a different body, the quietness of this chamber that holds both him and Javert and this strange thing which stretches between them, forever pulling them back together.

Or perhaps it chains only him. Perhaps it is only he who thinks even now with terrified longing of the moment when he had knelt before Javert and given himself over to the twisted thing that promised him peace in exchange for that abandonment of all shame.

The moment stretches. He feels cold and too hot, wants the blanket drawn over him to hide the shame of his bared body from Javert – wants Javert to gaze at him and see him and touch, and be helpless to stop it...

There are sounds eventually. He squeezes his eyes shut and breathes shallowly into the pillow as he realizes that Javert has returned to his desk and is writing once more.

Different sounds follow. Valjean still waits, nerves as tense as his muscles as Javert puts books away, leafs through a paper, mutters to himself as he sews on a button, makes himself tea. Through it all, Valjean's body aches with tense, fearful excitement, the skin between his legs prickling with the knowledge that these parts of his body that have never been touched by another are bared to Javert now, given over to his eyes, inviting a touch he both fears and knows he will not stop.

He is not certain how much time has passed until Javert finally comes to stand beside him once more. Perhaps two hours, maybe more. His limbs ache from the long hours of tension. He has relaxed into Javert's bed by now, has stopped to listen to his fast, frightened breathing and found a way to relax into this strange bed that smells of another.

"Well. You are still here," Javert says, and Valjean is not certain whether he still sounds angry, or if he is just tired. Valjean cannot make himself turn to face him. Not like this, not when he is already completely bare and vulnerable.

A deep breath, then the rustle of clothing. Valjean presses his damp face into the pillow, goosebumps breaking out on his skin as he imagines Javert stripping. And is this not what he agreed to when he showed up here, when he allowed Javert to pull his clothes off him? He swallows again, and then bites his lips to hold back a gasp when the narrow bed dips and Javert settles against him, his skin hot and damp, bony in places and downy with hair in others.

Javert is hard. Javert's prick drags over his skin, heavy and hot, and Valjean's breath escapes him in a gasp at the touch. It is too real, and not real enough at once; he can hardly believe this is happening, just as the memory of taking him into his mouth seems unreal now.

Javert makes an impatient sound; he twists and searches for something, and then his fingers are between Valjean's legs, and Valjean stiffens and gasps despite himself when two slick fingers prod at him. It seemed inevitable that it would happen. It seemed impossible that it would happen.

But now – now there is the unrelenting pressure, the slickness of the oil that makes the fingers slide inside and force him open before his mind has even truly understood that this will happen.

Has he searched this out? He cannot say, but it burns, and yet he gasps again, fearful to move as they slide deeper inside, ashamed that Javert is touching him like this, trembling that it is happening at last. Javert's fingers have always been strong. He remembers their grasp as they pulled him up after his escape from the sewers. Within him, they feel thick and strong and a little rough. pushing their way deeper inside, forcing him open with the help of the oil until he is gasping nearly constantly, something swelling hot within him after the nearly unbearable pressure. They feel thick in just the right way, and despite his embarrassment his legs fall open a little and he breathes a choked moan into the pillow as he waits.

His fingers twist into the sheet as Javert twists his within him. The pressure inside him is hot, a wave of warmth that comes with the relentless surge of the tide whether he wants it or not, lapping up his spine as his balls tighten, and he breathes an overwhelmed sound into the pillow.

Javert pauses. Valjean can hear that he is breathing just as heavily. Valjean stares blindly at the white fabric of the pillow, waiting, tensing. Will Javert touch him now? Again he thinks of that kind touch, fingers stroking his nape, and trembles because even now it is not something he can ask for. Perhaps it is not something he should ask for. It is not why he is here. And it will be enough to perhaps find a moment of oblivion when Javert takes what he has so shamefully offered for so long. What is between them is not affection, after all. What is between them is a chain woven from pain and shame and a hunger for that peace he finds all too rarely on his knees.

It is enough that Javert indulges him reluctantly. He cannot demand more. He cannot–

“Right,” Javert says, and the word is almost angry. But it is also rough with something that a part of Valjean recognizes as hunger, and that recognition twists and pulses within him, heat flooding all his limbs until his prick aches hot and heavy against the sheets.

Javert does not speak again. Javert's hand are on his thighs, parting him, and Valjean stares at the pillow, pants soundless gasps into the fabric as he imagines Javert's eyes on him, and then Javert slides inside him.

It drives the air out of him like a punch. He gasps into the pillow while his hands curl into fists; his body tightens as the heat and ache of it make him want to moan. It is overwhelming. He cannot think, can only pant into the damp fabric as reality fragments. His thoughts splinter like shattered glass, all that is left is sensation: Javert's small grunt as he pushes in. The aching stretch of his body forced to accommodate him. The warm, slick rub of Javert's limbs against his own. The scratchiness of the blanket against his chest; the way the bed smells like Javert; the way his own body feels too hot and too heavy to offer resistance. And then at the center of it, the pulsating feeling of fullness, the thick warmth within him that makes the ache of where he is spread open and made to yield almost pleasant.

He did not think that it would feel like this. He wanted oblivion. Instead, what he is given is almost too much to bear: living, moving warmth within him, the alien pleasure of being invaded and spread open and filled again and again in a way that makes his body ache with pleasure. Every time Javert presses within him, desire licks up his spine and he forgets all thought, forgets even why he is here, who he is. He can only yield to it and moan into the pillow as he gives himself up to it, spreading his legs and allowing Javert to make use of him, breathing in the scent of him as he slowly is unmade.

At last, pleasure spills out of him with one of the waves that move through him, the heat that swaps back and forth in his body like the tide flowing over at last, and it is relief and embarrassment at once as he shivers through all of it. Javert keeps moving inside him, muttering again – Valjean is too unraveled to make sense of his words, but he tenses anew at the choked groan and the way the bony hips jerk against him, then flushes with the sudden, mortified realization that Javert is spending himself inside him.

He thinks of it, the spill of warm liquid within him. He cannot speak; his face is hot and his limbs are too heavy to move. How strange, how mortifying, how–

He swallows a sound that threatens to break free of his heaving chest when he remembers again that impossible moment: Javert's prick in his mouth, the shame of it, and worse, the shame of wanting it! Not because his body found some sort of sick pleasure in being of such use to Javert, but because despite everything, despite who he was and despite who Javert was, and despite how it sickened him each and every time, a part of him can even now feel nothing but confused longing for that moment when he went to his knees and felt Javert's hand in his hair.

Perhaps, if it had been anyone but Javert...

But then, who else could Valjean ever have burdened with such a thing? Perhaps that was what made it palatable. Deep in his heart, he knew that Javert would take pleasure from the sight of Valjean on his knees before him if he knew. It was a lie, but one for which Valjean paid dearly, even though Javert was not aware of how Valjean spent the coin of his own subjugation.

Now Javert pants hot and damp against his neck, and something within Valjean is fearful again all of a sudden as he waits.

But the touch does not come. After a moment, still panting, Javert moves off him, and then there is silence again, and Valjean dares not move. Javert huffs at last, and there are a few soft sounds – Javert must be wiping himself off, but he dares not look at him. Not after what he has just yielded to. Not with those thoughts still on his mind.

“Sleep then,” Javert says when he finally returns to the bed, and the impatience in his voice stings, although Valjean tells himself that it is what he deserves. It is what he wanted, after all. He did not come to beg for smiles and kind touches. He came to–

To find a moment of respite, he reminds himself, and perhaps it has worked. His body still aches in a deep, unfamiliar way, and his limbs are too heavy to move. He does not think he will dream tonight, and still he holds himself tense as Javert climbs back into bed with him.

They are pressed tightly together, for the bed is narrow. Javert's skin is hot and damp with sweat. They are both covered by the same blanket now, and he could roll over and look at Javert, and perhaps apologize and then they could...

He cannot. He cannot. He cannot move, he cannot even think. He should not be here, bare and raw and aching as though he has allowed Javert to tear open his chest and touch the bitter darkness that has gnawed at the heart of him for so long. He should not be here.

Javert makes another soft sound that could be a huff, or the hoarse, near-silent laughter that has become familiar. It is derisive and strangely angry, and Valjean supposes he deserves that. He should not have come to impose upon him.

His shoulders tense, and he wishes he were home, alone in the small apartment instead of this bed with Javert's issue trickling out of his aching body, warm and wet and frighteningly human.

# 3.

Valjean tells himself he will not be back. And it is indeed easy to forget that such a thing has ever come to pass when he slowly makes his way up the Rue Saint Louis, until at the corner to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, where he would usually turn right, he stops instead, and looks at the street that stretches out before him in quiet despair. No more do prison walls rise before him, but he is no more free of his past than he was then. Some shackles can never be lost, some burdens cannot be put down, no matter how much his back aches beneath the weight.

He turns and begins the slow journey back home. There is nothing waiting for him there. No bright voice to exclaim with delight when he opens the door; no daughter to chide him for being late for supper.

Darkness stretches before and behind him. He walks with the slow, unsteady gait of a man who cannot clearly see where he is stepping.

He tells himself he will return to his rooms and pray, and soon it will be evening and he will sleep. This day too will pass, as shall all those that will still come, and in the end it will not matter how long he has to wait.

His disobedient feet that walk ever more slowly carry him past a street, and around another corner. He realizes the fact with almost surprise; he had, he tells himself with true confusion, not intended to return here.

Javert lets him in without a word of greeting. Valjean cannot quite meet his eyes. His hands are trembling; shame and a strange, sick helplessness rolls through him, cold and sharp in his stomach, and he cannot speak because he fears his throat might give voice to a sob instead.

He cannot do that to Javert. The darkness inside him that gnaws at him, against which he has no defense left now that Cosette is gone from his life, is a thing Javert would not understand. He does not think Javert ever understood. It horrifies him to imagine Javert aware of how it made his body burn when he knelt before him, so very long ago in Montreuil.

So many choices. So many mistakes he has made. And now that it is almost done, he is already too weak to resist this part of him that clings to the memory of Javert's taste sharp and bitter in his mouth, as though he had swallowed around a blade.

Perhaps he had.

Either way, there is no way out of the maze of his thoughts. He knows he will not find sleep today if he were to return home. What does he seek to find with Javert? He cannot say.

Javert makes him wait. That too is torment, a torment that makes Valjean flush and pale whenever Javert addresses him sharply. Javert is impatient. Javert is angry – angry to see him returned here? Angry, perhaps, that Valjean has no words to speak to explain why he returns again and again...?

No, he tells himself and clenches his hands into fists to keep from reaching out when Javert brushes past him with cold eyes, fetching something from his desk. Valjean turns to stare out of the small window with unseeing eyes instead.

No. Javert would not care about explanations. And there is nothing that could explain. Anything he could say would only make it worse.

All he has to give is this offer.

Javert grows bored of the silence that stretches between them sooner or later. In the end, Javert grabs his collar, nostrils flaring, a strand of hair hanging into his eyes, and Valjean looks at him, mute, yielding. Then he finds himself pushed down onto Javert's desk, and this, he tells himself, does not matter either, even though he now breathes in the scent of old oak and dry ink.

It is just as humiliating this time. Not the act itself, but what comes with it: the closeness. The helplessness of feeling Javert within him, hot and alive, and knowing that there is truly nowhere to hide, that he has yielded all of himself. Javert's breaths come harsh, like the panting of an animal, and Valjean, who feels his face hot with shame, hides his head in his arms, listening to the awful sound of his own heavy breathing. Again it is nearly unbearable to be so filled. The pressure within him is impossible, makes fire lap at his insides, tension coiling along his spine and down into his balls every time Javert slides into him. He pants into his arm, frightened and overwhelmed while the pressure grows and grows.

How can he let Javert do this thing to him?

And yet, the heat that blooms in his body is so terrifying and all-consuming that he does not want it to end. His mind is quiet. There is no thought now but this endless, ecstatic labor, climbing up towards something that will consume him, that must consume him–

He moans miserably into his arm when the heat spills out of him once more, gasping for breath even as his body tightens and arches and the hard wood of the desk cuts painfully into the front of his thighs.

Javert's groan is low and satisfied. Valjean pants, tense with a feeling he cannot quite name – how he wishes it were disgust! – as Javert spends himself with animal sounds of pleasure. Javert's hair teases against Valjean's sweaty nape for a moment as he bends over him, hips rolling lazily against him again and again as Javert's release fills him with wet heat.

Afterwards, Valjean tries to cling to this silent satiation for as long as he can. His mind is pleasantly blank, his body aching and weary. Perhaps he could sleep now, he thinks, and then, longingly: perhaps he could sleep now, and sleep, and sleep, and not wake again...

Javert drops a cloth next to him, and Valjean flinches, then awkwardly pushes himself up. He takes the cloth without a word. He still cannot meet Javert's eyes.

There is a small pool of sticky, white fluid on the desk's surface. The sickness that has been curdling in his stomach rushes up, and he has to swallow again and again to keep it down, and then wipe at himself with shaking hands.

"Which one of us is worse, do you think," Javert says after a moment. He still sounds angry. Valjean feels his shame rise again at how he comes to seek this out.

"Is it me, for taking this from you? Or is it not you for using me like this."

Valjean at last dares a tentative look, the stained cloth still in his trembling hand. But Javert does not look at him. Javert's jaw is clenched, and then he makes another sound of frustration, and Valjean swallows and puts down the rag.

"Out. Out with you now. Don't come back. Or come back when you need my prick in your mouth again, I suppose. It is not as though I can keep you from it."

Valjean's cheeks heat as though the words were a slap, but he obeys. Even though he tiredly tells himself that this was their final meeting, that this has to be enough, that he cannot in good conscience return, knowing the burden this is for Javert – even knowing all of that, he fears he will be back, unless God at last grants him that final sleep.

# 4.

Days have passed. Valjean supposes it is a good sign. Perhaps to an observer, it would mean that his strength is returning, that he can withstand temptation, that he has gained courage enough to lead his steps away from Javert's chambers. Now, every day when he walks to Cosette, he makes himself stop and retraces his steps before the house has even come into view, returning to his own rooms without ever seeing her.

His limbs feel strangely light, although every step takes an impossibly long time. He has to keep focusing on it: the act, once as natural as breathing, now takes effort and concentration: lift one foot, move it forward, set it down. His body, long accustomed to ill use and deprivation, burns from the exertion, but he ignores it. In any case, the ache within him is harder to bear, that suffocating emptiness where once the joy of Cosette's happiness with him had resided. That ache too is more distant now, almost as if it is another man suffering instead of him. He smiles wearily at the thought. Once he is gone from this world, that ache will have entirely faded away. It will remain with this body marked by pain and labor, and, perhaps, if God is merciful, he will rest free from it all.

He does not even make it to the corner this time. Behind him waits the quiet, narrow Rue de l'Homme Armé. To his right is the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, and he could follow it to the next corner, and perhaps there turn away, as he had done yesterday, for the streets that lead to Cosette are barred to him now – have to be barred.

Or he could take the street that opens there, and which leads to –

His breath is stuck in his throat. He cannot even think it. And yet a terrible longing fills him once more.

Longing for Javert? That possibility frightens him, but even now that he thinks of him with a shameful shudder, he knows it is not so. Even the memory of Javert in his mind is strangely dim, and it is hard to even properly recall the man's features. But his limbs ache with that hollow emptiness, blackness gnawing at his marrow, and he thinks again of that one moment when kind fingers touched his nape, and he thinks of the Bishop's smile, and he thinks of the ache of his knees on the cold stone in the chapel as saints stare down at him in silent judgment, and it all runs together in his head.

All he wants is–

Forgiveness, a voice inside him dares to speak, and he cringes away from it. What right has he to ask for such a thing? He makes himself remember the look on Cosette's face when she saw the chaingang pass. Could he bear it for her to look at him if she knew?

It is impossible. He could not live. He could not bear for her to remember that, and look at him, and know that once, he was as much of a wretch, once, he was as little human.

Let him die human in her eyes. That will be enough, he tells himself, and thinks of a small grave somewhere, one stone among many. No one who passes it will know him. No one who passes it will stop. But every now and then, perhaps, Cosette would come, and touch the stone, and cry a little for him, and think of how happy they were.

Certainly that is not asking too much. Certainly Pontmercy can grant him that, that final mercy, that final–

His thoughts scatter away when he realizes that his weary feet have indeed carried him to Javert's door once more. He closes his eyes, and even so takes another step forward. Cosette does not know, but Javert knows. Javert will not let him forget. Javert saw him chained and wretched. Perhaps there is no better man to use for his atonement. It might be distasteful to Javert, but even so, has not Valjean saved his life? Javert owes him nothing – but this one thing, this one thing Javert can give him. It cannot be so great a hardship. If Javert will be angry with him for it again, so be it. Valjean does not suppose that he will come again. It takes so much effort now to go up his stairs that he does not think he will be able to leave his own room tomorrow.

It will be welcome.

But for now, he is still here. And as usual, Javert does not turn him away. As usual, Valjean cannot meet his eyes.

He is flushed as he stands before him. Cold sweat pricks at his skin. He thinks of being spread out on the bed, Javert's weight on his back, Javert's breath against his neck. He should not have come, he tells himself again as the despair inside him rises. The weariness is spreading through all his limbs. It is difficult to move. He does not even know if he can survive such a thing again, to spread himself out for Javert, to let Javert of all people look at this flawed, mortal shell of him. To give in means to allow Javert to push and prod and use this body until even inside of him, there is nothing but the heat of Javert and the pressure of him that makes pleasure twist and turn, as though this body is no longer his own but just a tool in the hand of Javert...

He has been silent too long. Javert has already turned away from him, muttering "Right" under his breath again as though this was what he expected, as though Valjean has inexplicably let him down again. Valjean nearly sways on his feet. He is so hollow now, his bones feel so brittle that he thinks he will break if he allows Javert to push him onto the bed.

Valjean wishes he could speak. Certainly that must be what Javert has been waiting for all this time. An explanation. Anything, anything at all, but Valjean has no words for this, Valjean can find no words even for himself to explain what any of this means.

He is exhausted. It seems natural to move forward and sink to his knees again when Javert sits down at his desk. Javert makes another half-amused, half-annoyed snort that makes something twist in Valjean's chest – but then Javert's hand is in his hair. The touch is not kind at all but firm and rough, but that is well too because Javert's other hand is now opening his trousers, and Valjean can feel nothing but gratitude at being given this task.

It is so much easier when he can abandon himself to the firm, guiding touch, when he can open his mouth and be obedient and lose himself in the sensation of it, with no fear, no doubts, no darkness incessantly gnawing at his thoughts. Here, on his knees, it is enough to be and to do this task, and when Javert's prick pushes eagerly at his lips, he opens for it with a sigh, selfishly glad for the way Javert's hand tightens in his hair.

It is good. It is overwhelming. Valjean once more learns gratefully how to mold his tongue to the thick shape in his mouth, how to hold the weight of it, taste along it, moan thickly at the slickness that is rubbed over his tongue as Javert slides in a little deeper.

It does not matter now how lightheaded he is, how everything seems to glide further and further away from him. Here, the floor is cold and hard against his knees, and Javert is hot in his mouth, tasting of the animal musk of their sin. Javert's grip on his hair is rough enough that he can abandon himself to it, allowing his self to slip further and further away until this is all there is, the thick length that makes use of his mouth, Javert's soft grunts, the inevitability of it all. Is this not how it has started?

He should never have desired to please this man. He swallows thickly when the head of Javert's prick brushes the back of his throat, hears Javert moan, then does it again.

He does not want to please Javert, he thinks weakly, warmth spreading somewhere within at the breathless sounds Javert is making.

It could be anyone. Is that not true? Even back then in Montreuil, it could have been anyone. But Javert was the only one who was there. The only one who, perhaps, could not be tarnished by such a thing. The years in Toulon have at least taught Valjean that much.

Javert's prick slides deeper into his throat, and Valjean swallows around it still, tears burning in his eyes even as Javert's grip on his hair gentles, those strong fingers trembling now as Javert moans.

"I cannot.. I cannot believe you... Look at you!" Javert's breath comes in little gasps, and Valjean squeezes his burning eyes shut.

"Your mouth is so red. It looks... You were made for this. Do you hear me, Jean Valjean?"

Valjean swallows and cannot breathe and cannot moan as those fingers gently touch his cheek.

"I told you. I cannot believe it. I told you you cannot return, only to – to suck my prick, and here you are, here you–"

He gasps again, and Valjean feels his cheeks heat with a terrible shame, his mouth still obediently open, his throat still full of Javert's prick.

"How good you are at this! So shameless. To think that – that the man cannot look at me, and yet look at him now! Look how eagerly that mouth opens for me. I remember how you looked in Montreuil. You cannot fool me anymore. I think of you, hard even then, your lips so red, kissing my boots like... like..."

Javert groans and Valjean cannot make a sound, can only swallow dutifully again and again as Javert's release flows down his throat, hot tears dripping down his own cheeks at last. It is all true. The shame within is hot enough that he fears he might faint. Even now he is hard, his body glorying in those shameful words that are yet nothing but the truth, his prick achingly hot against the already damp fabric of his trousers.

Above him, Javert's breath is coming fast. Once more it is the harsh panting of an animal – but is it not Valjean who invited this? He thinks in despair about how soon, God will have to allow him sleep, even as he presses his lips to Javert's prick after it slides from his throat. His jaw aches. His throat feels sore, and shame fills him with such hot misery that maybe he will just faint here, like this – and still his body is hard, eager for more of this degradation he should not crave.

He does not crave it, he tells himself. Tears are still dripping hot down his face. He has never wanted this.

He has only wanted a moment of respite. A permission to go to his knees, if only briefly, under the weight of the burden that has been placed onto his shoulders. Now his shoulders shake; now, so close, when he has almost carried it to the final end, his body rebels and his strength falters, and he cannot stop the tears that flow.

"I wish you would not use me as your punishment."

Valjean stiffens at Javert's mumbled words. Something about them hits him – perhaps it is just the fact that now, at last, Javert no longer sounds angry. There is nothing but weariness in his voice, and Valjean knows weariness so well. Then those hands slide back into his hair with tormenting gentleness, stroking his head, fingertips resting comforting and warm against his nape once more.

Valjean knows he should leave. He knows that he cannot stay, that Javert should not see him like this.

But his shoulders ache so much, and he cannot straighten them anymore. Javert's fingers smooth up and down his nape, stroking him as he trembles through the tears that choke him until he cannot breathe, and at last the emptiness within him breaks forth in sobs that make his body shake.

It was never supposed to end like this, he thinks even as he is allowed to rest his head on Javert's lap, blind from the tears that do not cease to fall.

It was supposed to end quietly, in solitude, with sleep finding him at last.

Javert's fingers are still warm against his skin, and they stroke his neck with gentleness. It was not supposed to end like this. But now he finds that he cannot move away from it either.

**Author's Note:**

> The Reparation is prayer for all sins, for all faults, for all disorders, for all violations, for all iniquities, for all the crimes which are committed upon the earth. During twelve consecutive hours, from four o'clock in the afternoon till four o'clock in the morning, or from' four o'clock in the morning till four o'clock in the afternoon, the sister who, performs _the reparation_ remains on her knees upon the stone before the holy sacrament, her hands clasped and a rope around her neck. When fatigue becomes insupportable, she prostrates herself, her face against the marble, and her arms crossed; this is all her relief. In this attitude she prays for all the guilty in the universe; This is grand even to sublimity. 
> 
> As this act is performed before a post on the top of which a taper is burning, they say indiscriminately, _to perform the reparation_ or _to be at the post_. The nuns even prefer, from humility, this latter expression, which involves an idea of punishment and of abasement. 
> 
> _The performance of the reparation_ is a process in which the whole soul is absorbed. 
> 
> Les Misérables 2.6.2


End file.
